The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Ii Part 46

3. the chaos; and

4. the material world resulting from the powers communicated by the divine 'fiat'. In the Phoenician scheme there are in fact but two--a self-organizing chaos, and the omniforrn nature as the result. In the Greek scheme we have three terms, 1. the 'hyle', [Greek: hulae], which holds the place of the chaos, or the waters, in the true system; 2.

[Greek: ta s_omata], answering to the Mosaic heaven and earth; and 3. the Saturnian [Greek: chronoi huperchonioi],--which answer to the antecedent darkness of the Mosaic scheme, but to which the elder physico-theologists attributed a self-polarizing power--a 'natura gemina quae fit et facit, agit et pat.i.tur'. In other words, the 'Elohim' of the Greeks were still but a 'natura deorum', [Greek: to theion], in which a vague plurality adhered; or if any unity was imagined, it was not personal--not a unity of excellence, but simply an expression of the negative--that which was to pa.s.s, but which had not yet pa.s.sed, into distinct form.

All this will seem strange and obscure at first reading,--perhaps fantastic. But it will only seem so. Dry and prolix, indeed, it is to me in the writing, full as much as it can be to others in the attempt to understand it. But I know that, once mastered, the idea will be the key to the whole cypher of the aeschylean mythology. The sum stated in the terms of philosophic logic is this: First, what Moses appropriated to the chaos itself: what Moses made pa.s.sive and a 'materia subjecta et lucis et tenebrarum', the containing [Greek: prothemenon] of the 'thesis' and 'ant.i.thesis';--this the Greek placed anterior to the chaos;--the chaos itself being the struggle between the 'hyperchronia', the [Greek: ideai p.r.o.nomoi], as the unevolved, unproduced, 'prothesis', of which [Greek: idea kai nomos]--(idea and law)--are the 'thesis' and 'ant.i.thesis'. (I use the word 'produced' in the mathematical sense, as a point elongating itself to a bipolar line.) Secondly, what Moses establishes, not merely as a transcendant 'Monas', but as an individual [Greek: Henas] likewise;--this the Greek took as a harmony, [Greek: Theoi hathanatoi, to theion], as distinguished from [Greek: o Theos]--or, to adopt the more expressive language of the Pythagoreans and cabalists 'numen numerantis'; and these are to be contemplated as the ident.i.ty.

Now according to the Greek philosopheme or 'mythus', in these, or in this ident.i.ty, there arose a war, schism, or division, that is, a polarization into thesis and ant.i.thesis. In consequence of this schism in the [Greek: to theion], the 'thesis' becomes 'nomos', or law, and the 'ant.i.thesis' becomes 'idea', but so that the 'nomos' is 'nomos', because, and only because, the 'idea' is 'idea': the 'nomos' is not idea, only because the idea has not become 'nomos'. And this 'not' must be heedfully borne in mind through the whole interpretation of this most profound and pregnant philosopheme. The 'nomos' is essentially idea, but existentially it is idea 'substans', that is, 'id quod stat subtus', understanding 'sensu generalissimo'. The 'idea', which now is no longer idea, has substantiated itself, become real as opposed to idea, and is henceforward, therefore, 'substans in substantiato'. The first product of its energy is the thing itself: 'ipsa se posuit et jam facta est ens positum'. Still, however, its productive energy is not exhausted in this product, but overflows, or is effluent, as the specific forces, properties, faculties, of the product. It reappears, in short, in the body, as the function of the body. As a sufficient ill.u.s.tration, though it cannot be offered as a perfect instance, take the following.

'In the world we see every where evidences of a unity, which the component parts are so far from explaining, that they necessarily presuppose it as the cause and condition of their existing as those parts, or even of their existing at all. This antecedent unity, or cause and principle of each union, it has since the time of Bacon and Kepler, been customary to call a law. This crocus, for instance, or any flower the reader may have in sight or choose to bring before his fancy;--that the root, stem, leaves, petals, &c. cohere as one plant, is owing to an antecedent power or principle in the seed, which existed before a single particle of the matters that const.i.tute the size and visibility of the crocus had been attracted from the surrounding soil, air, and moisture. Shall we turn to the seed? Here too the same necessity meets us, an antecedent unity (I speak not of the parent plant, but of an agency antecedent in order of operance, yet remaining present as the conservative and reproductive power,) must here too be supposed. a.n.a.lyze the seed with the finest tools, and let the solar microscope come in aid of your senses,--what do you find?--means and instruments, a wondrous fairy-tale of nature, magazines of food, stores of various sorts, pipes, spiracles, defences,--a house of many chambers, and the owner and inhabitant invisible.'[4]

Now, compare a plant, thus contemplated, with an animal. In the former, the productive energy exhausts itself, and as it were, sleeps in the product or 'organismus'--in its root, stem, foliage, blossoms, seed. Its balsams, gums, resins, 'aromata', and all other bases of its sensible qualities, are, it is well known, mere excretions from the vegetable, eliminated, as lifeless, from the actual plant. The qualities are not its properties, but the properties, or far rather, the dispersion and volatilization of these extruded and rejected bases. But in the animal it is otherwise. Here the antecedent unity--the productive and self-realizing idea--strives, with partial success to re-emanc.i.p.ate itself from its product, and seeks once again to become 'idea': vainly indeed: for in order to this, it must be retrogressive, and it hath subjected itself to the fates, the evolvers of the endless thread--to the stern necessity of progression. 'Idea' itself it cannot become, but it may in long and graduated process, become an image, an a.n.a.lOGON, an anti-type of IDEA. And this [Greek: eid_olon] may approximate to a perfect likeness. 'Quod est simile, nequit esse idem'. Thus, in the lower animals, we see this process of emanc.i.p.ation commence with the intermediate link, or that which forms the transition from properties to faculties, namely, with sensation. Then the faculties of sense, locomotion, construction, as, for instance, webs, hives, nests, &c. Then the functions; as of instinct, memory, fancy, instinctive intelligence, or understanding, as it exists in the most intelligent animals. Thus the idea (henceforward no more idea, but irrecoverable by its own fatal act) commences the process of its own trans.m.u.tation, as 'substans in substantiato', as the 'enteleche', or the 'vis formatrix', and it finishes the process as 'substans e substantiato', that is, as the understanding.

If, for the purpose of elucidating this process, I might be allowed to imitate the symbolic language of the algebraists, and thus to regard the successive steps of the process as so many powers and dignities of the 'nomos' or law, the scheme would be represented thus [N^1 represents N superscript 1, i.e. N to the power of 1. text Ed.]:--

Nomos^1 = Product: N^2 = Property: N^3 = Faculty: N^4 = Function: N^5 = Understanding;--

which is, indeed, in one sense, itself a 'nomos', inasmuch as it is the index of the 'nomos', as well as its highest function; but, like the hand of a watch, it is likewise a 'nomizomenon'. It is a verb, but still a verb pa.s.sive.

On the other hand, idea is so far co-essential with 'nomos', that by its co-existence--(not confluence)--with the 'nomos' [Greek: hen nomizomenois] (with the 'organismus' and its faculties and functions in the man,) it becomes itself a 'nomos'. But, observe, a 'nomos autonomos', or containing its law in itself likewise;--even as the 'nomos' produces for its highest product the understanding, so the idea, in its opposition and, of course, its correspondence to the 'nomos', begets in itself an 'a.n.a.logon' to product; and this is self-consciousness. But as the product can never become idea, so neither can the idea (if it is to remain idea) become or generate a distinct product. This 'a.n.a.logon' of product is to be itself; but were it indeed and substantially a product, it would cease to be self. It would be an object for a subject, not (as it is and must be) an object that is its own subject, and 'vice versa'; a conception which, if the uncombining and infusile genius of our language allowed it, might be expressed by the term subject-object. Now, idea, taken in indissoluble connection with this 'a.n.a.logon' of product is mind, that which knows itself, and the existence of which may be inferred, but cannot appear or become a 'phaenomenon'.

By the benignity of Providence, the truths of most importance in themselves, and which it most concerns us to know, are familiar to us, even from childhood. Well for us if we do not abuse this privilege, and mistake the familiarity of words which convey these truths for a clear understanding of the truths themselves! If the preceding disquisition, with all its subtlety and all its obscurity, should answer no other purpose, it will still have been neither purposeless, nor devoid of utility, should it only lead us to sympathize with the strivings of the human intellect, awakened to the infinite importance of the inward oracle [Greek: gn_othi seauton]--and almost instinctively shaping its course of search in conformity with the Platonic intimation:--[Greek: psuchaes phusin haxi_os logou katanoaesai oiei dunaton einai, haneu aes tou holou phuse_os]; but be this as it may, the ground work of the aeschylean 'mythus' is laid in the definition of idea and law, as correlatives that mutually interpret each the other;--an idea, with the adequate power of realizing itself being a law, and a law considered abstractedly from, or in the absence of, the power of manifesting itself in its appropriate product being an idea. Whether this be true philosophy, is not the question. The school of Aristotle would, of course, deny, the Platonic affirm it; for in this consists the difference of the two schools. Both acknowledge ideas as distinct from the mere generalizations from objects of sense: both would define an idea as an 'ens rationale', to which there can be no adequate correspondent in sensible experience. But, according to Aristotle, ideas are regulative only, and exist only as functions of the mind:--according to Plato, they are const.i.tutive likewise, and one in essence with the power and life of nature;--[Greek: hen log'o z'oae aen, kai hae z'oae haen to ph'os t'on anthr'op'on]. And this I a.s.sert, was the philosophy of the mythic poets, who, like aeschylus, adapted the secret doctrines of the mysteries as the (not always safely disguised) antidote to the debasing influences of the religion of the state.

But to return and conclude this preliminary explanation. We have only to subst.i.tute the term will, and the term const.i.tutive power, for _nomos_ or law, and the process is the same. Permit me to represent the ident.i.ty or 'prothesis' by the letter Z and the 'thesis' and 'ant.i.thesis' by X and Y respectively. Then I say X by not being Y, but in consequence of being the correlative opposite of Y, is will; and Y, by not being X, but the correlative and opposite of X, is nature,--'natura naturans', [Greek: no_mos physiko_s]. Hence we may see the necessity of contemplating the idea now as identical with the reason, and now as one with the will, and now as both in one, in which last case I shall, for convenience sake, employ the term 'Nous', the rational will, the practical reason.

We are now out of the holy jungle of transcendental mataphysics; if indeed, the reader's patience shall have had strength and persistency enough to allow me to exclaim--

Ivimus ambo Per densas umbras: at tenet umbra Deum.

Not that I regard the foregoing as articles of faith, or as all true;--I have implied the contrary by contrasting it with, at least, by shewing its disparateness from, the Mosaic, which, 'bona fide', I do regard as the truth. But I believe there is much, and profound, truth in it, 'supra captum [Greek: psilosoph'on], qui non agnosc.u.n.t divinum, ideoque nec naturam, nisi nomine, agnosc.u.n.t; sed res cunctas ex sensuali corporeo cogitant, quibus hac ex causa interiora clausa manent, et simul c.u.m illis exteriora quae proxima interioribus sunt'! And with no less confidence do I believe that the positions above given, true or false, are contained in the Promethean 'mythus'.

In this 'mythus', Jove is the impersonated representation or symbol of the 'nomos'--'Jupiter est quodcunque vides'. He is the 'mens agitans molem', but at the same time, the 'molem corpoream ponens et const.i.tuens'. And so far the Greek philosopheme does not differ essentially from the cosmotheism, or identification of G.o.d with the universe, in which consisted the first apostacy of mankind after the flood, when they combined to raise a temple to the heavens, and which is still the favored religion of the Chinese. Prometheus, in like manner, is the impersonated representative of Idea, or of the same power as Jove, but contemplated as independent and not immersed in the product,--as law 'minus' the productive energy. As such it is next to be seen what the several significances of each must or may be according to the philosophic conception; and of which significances, therefore, should we find in the philosopheme a correspondent to each, we shall be ent.i.tled to a.s.sert that such are the meanings of the fable. And first of Jove:--

Jove represents

1. 'Nomos' generally, as opposed to Idea or 'Nous':

2. 'Nomos archinomos', now as the father, now as the sovereign, and now as the includer and representative of the 'nomoi ouoanioi kosmikoi', or 'dii majores', who, had joined or come over to Jove in the first schism:

3. 'Nomos d.a.m.naetaes'--the subjugator of the spirits, of the [Greek: ideai p.r.o.nomoi], who, thus subjugated, became '[Greek: nomoi huponomioi hupospondoi], t.i.tanes pacati, dii minores', that is, the elements considered as powers reduced to obedience under yet higher powers than themselves:

4. 'Nomos [Greek: politikos]', law in the Pauline sense, '[Greek: nomos allotrionomos]' in ant.i.thesis to '[Greek: nomos autonomos]'.

[Footnote 1: The Act meant is probably the 5. Eliz. c. 20, enforcing the two previous Acts of Henry VIII. and Philip and Mary, and reciting that natural born Englishmen had 'become of the fellowship of the said vagabonds, by transforming or disguising themselves in their apparel,'

&c.--Ed.]

[Footnote 2: Mr. Coleridge was in the constant habit of expressing himself on paper by the algebraic symbols. They have an uncouth look in the text of an ordinary essay, and I have sometimes ventured to render them by the equivalent words. But most of the readers of these volumes will know that--means 'less by', or,' without'; + 'more by', or,' in addition to'; = 'equal to', or, 'the same as'.--Ed].

[Footnote 3: Friend, III. Essay, 9.]

[Footnote 4: Aids to Reflection. Moral and Religious Aphorisms. Aphorism VI. Ed.]

COROLLARY.

It is in this sense that Jove's jealous, ever-quarrelsome, spouse represents the political sacerdotal 'cultus', the church, in short, of republican paganism;--a church by law established for the mere purposes of the particular state, unenn.o.bled by the consciousness of instrumentality to higher purposes;--at once unenlightened and unchecked by revelation. Most gratefully ought we to acknowledge that since the completion of our const.i.tution in 1688, we may, with unflattering truth, elucidate the spirit and character of such a church by the contrast of the inst.i.tution, to which England owes the larger portion of its superiority in that, in which alone superiority is an unmixed blessing,--the diffused cultivation of its inhabitants. But previously to this period, I shall offend no enlightened man if I say without distinction of parties--'intra muros peccatur et extra';--that the history of Christendom presents us with too many ill.u.s.trations of this Junonian jealousy, this factious harra.s.sing of the sovereign power as soon as the latter betrayed any symptoms of a disposition to its true policy, namely, to privilege and perpetuate that which is best,--to tolerate the tolerable,--and to restrain none but those who would restrain all, and subjugate even the state itself. But while truth extorts this confession, it, at the same time, requires that it should be accompanied by an avowal of the fact, that the spirit is a relic of Paganism; and with a bitter smile would an aeschylus or a Plato in the shades, listen to a Gibbon or a Hume vaunting the mild and tolerant spirit of the state religions of ancient Greece or Rome. Here we have the sense of Jove's intrigues with Europa, Io, &c. whom the G.o.d, in his own nature a general lover, had successively taken under his protection.

And here, too, see the full appropriateness of this part of the 'mythus', in which symbol fades away into allegory, but yet in reference to the working cause, as grounded in humanity, and always existing either actually or potentially, and thus never ceases wholly to be a symbol or tautegory.

Prometheus represents,

1. 'sensu generali', Idea [Greek: p.r.o.nomos,] and in this sense he is a [Greek: 'theos h.o.m.ophulos'], a fellow-tribesman both of the 'dii majores', with Jove at their head, and of the t.i.tans or 'dii pacati':

2. He represents Idea [Greek: 'philonomos, nomodeiktaes';] and in this sense the former friend and counsellor of Jove or 'Nous uranius':

3. [Greek: 'Logos philanthr'opos',] the divine humanity, the humane G.o.d, who retained unseen, kept back, or (in the 'catachresis' characteristic of the Phoenicio-Grecian mythology) stole, a portion or 'ignicula from the living spirit of law, which remained with the celestial G.o.ds unexpended [Greek: en t_o nomizesthai.] He gave that which, according to the whole a.n.a.logy of things, should have existed either as pure divinity, the sole property and birth-right of the 'Dii Joviales', the 'Uranions', or was conceded to inferior beings as a 'substans in substantiato'. This spark divine Prometheus gave to an elect, a favored animal, not as a 'substans' or understanding, commensurate with, and confined by, the const.i.tution and conditions of this particular organism, but as 'aliquid superstans, liberum, non subactum, invictum, impacatum, [Greek: mae nouizomenon.] This gift, by which we are to understand reason theoretical and practical, was therefore a [Greek: 'nomos autonomus']--unapproachable and unmodifiable by the animal basis--that is, by the pre-existing 'substans' with its products, the animal 'organismus' with its faculties and functions; but yet endowed with the power of potentiating, enn.o.bling, and prescribing to, the substance; and hence, therefore, a [Greek: nomos nomopeithaes,] lex legisuada':

4. By a transition, ordinary even in allegory, and appropriate to mythic symbol, but especially significant in the present case--the transition, I mean, from the giver to the gift--the giver, in very truth, being the gift, 'whence the soul receives reason; and reason is her being,' says our Milton. Reason is from G.o.d, and G.o.d is reason, 'mens ipsissima'.

5. Prometheus represents, [Greek: nous en anthr'op'o--nous ag'onistaes]'.

Thus contemplated, the 'Nous' is of necessity, powerless; for, all power, that is, productivity, or productive energy, is in Law, that is, [Greek: nomos allotrionomos]:[1] still, however, the Idea in the Law, the 'numerus numerans' become [Greek: nomos], is the principle of the Law; and if with Law dwells power, so with the knowledge or the Idea 'scientialis' of the Law, dwells prophecy and foresight. A perfect astronomical time-piece in relation to the motions of the heavenly bodies, or the magnet in the mariner's compa.s.s in relation to the magnetism of the earth, is a sufficient ill.u.s.tration.

6. Both [Greek: nomos] and Idea (or 'Nous') are the 'verb.u.m'; but, as in the former, it is 'verb.u.m fiat' 'the Word of the Lord,'--in the latter it must be the 'verb.u.m fiet', or, 'the Word of the Lord in the mouth of the prophet.' 'Pari argumento', as the knowledge is therefore not power, the power is not knowledge. The [Greek: nomos], the [Greek: Zeus pantokrat'or], seeks to learn, and, as it were, to wrest the secret, the hateful secret, of his own fate, namely, the transitoriness adherent to all ant.i.thesis; for the ident.i.ty or the absolute is alone eternal. This secret Jove would extort from the 'Nous', or Prometheus, which is the sixth representment of Prometheus.

7. Introduce but the least of real as opposed to 'ideal', the least speck of positive existence, even though it were but the mote in a sun beam, into the sciential 'contemplamen' or theorem, and it ceases to be science. 'Ratio desinit esse pura ratio et fit discursus, stat subter et fit [Greek: hypothetikon]:--non superstat'. The 'Nous' is bound to a rock, the immovable firmness of which is indissolubly connected with its barrenness, its non-productivity. Were it productive it would be 'Nomos'; but it is 'Nous', because it is not 'Nomos'.

8. Solitary [Greek: abat_o en eraemia]. Now I say that the 'Nous', notwithstanding its diversity from the 'Nomizomeni', is yet, relatively to their supposed original essence, [Greek: pasi tois nomizomenois tantogenaes], of the same race or 'radix': though in another sense, namely, in relation to the [Greek: pan theion]--the pantheistic 'Elohim', it is conceived anterior to the schism, and to the conquest and enthronization of Jove who succeeded. Hence the Prometheus of the great tragedian is [Greek: theos suggenaes]. The kindred deities come to him, some to soothe, to condole; others to give weak, yet friendly, counsels of submission; others to tempt, or insult. The most prominent of the latter, and the most odious to the imprisoned and insulated 'Nous', is Hermes, the impersonation of interest with the entrancing and serpentine 'Caduceus', and, as interest or motives intervening between the reason and its immediate self-determinations, with the antipathies to the [Greek: nomos autonomos]. The Hermes impersonates the eloquence of cupidity, the cajolement of power regnant; and in a larger sense, custom, the irrational in language, [Greek: rhaemata ta rhaetorika], the fluent, from [Greek: rheo]--the rhetorical in opposition to [Greek: logoi, ta noaeta]. But, primarily, the Hermes is the symbol of interest.

He is the messenger, the inter-nuncio, in the low but expressive phrase, the go-between, to beguile or insult. And for the other visitors of Prometheus, the elementary powers, or spirits of the elements, 't.i.tanes pacati', [Greek: theoi huponomioi], va.s.sal potentates, and their solicitations, the n.o.blest interpretation will be given, if I repeat the lines of our great contemporary poet:--

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own: Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, And e'en with something of a mother's mind, And no unworthy aim, The homely nurse doth all she can To make her foster-child, her inmate, Man Forget the glories he hath known And that imperial palace whence he came:--

WORDSWORTH.

which exquisite pa.s.sage is prefigured in coa.r.s.er clay, indeed, and with a less lofty spirit, but yet excellently in their kind, and even more fortunately for the ill.u.s.tration and ornament of the present commentary, in the fifth, sixth, and seventh stanzas of Dr. Henry More's poem on the Pre-existence of the Soul:--

Thus groping after our own center's near And proper substance, we grew dark, contract, Swallow'd up of earthly life! Ne what we were Of old, thro' ignorance can we detect.

Like n.o.ble babe, by fate or friends' neglect Left to the care of sorry salvage wight, Grown up to manly years cannot conject His own true parentage, nor read aright What father him begot, what womb him brought to light.

So we, as stranger infants elsewhere born, Cannot divine from what spring we did flow; Ne dare these base alliances to scorn, Nor lift ourselves a whit from hence below; Ne strive our parentage again to know, Ne dream we once of any other stock, Since foster'd upon Rhea's [1] knees we grow, In Satyrs' arms with many a mow and mock Oft danced; and hairy Pan our cradle oft hath rock'd!

But Pan nor Rhea be our parentage!

We been the offspring of the all seeing Nous, &c.

To express the supersensual character of the reason, its abstraction from sensation, we find the Prometheus [Greek: aterpae]--while in the yearnings accompanied with the remorse incident to, and only possible in consequence of the Nous being, the rational, self-conscious, and therefore responsible will, he is [Greek: gupi diaknaiomenos]

If to these contemplations we add the control and despotism exercised on the free reason by Jupiter in his symbolical character, as [Greek: nomos politikos];--by custom (Hermes); by necessity, [Greek: bia kai kratos];--by the mechanic arts and powers, [Greek: suggeneis t_o No_o]