philosophy is contained in these words: Rationem defectus esse defectum rationis.—Hobbes.
Hartley just able to speak a few words, making a fire-place of stones, with stones for fire—four stones for the fire-place, two for the fire—seems to illustrate a theory of language, the use of arbitrary symbols in imagination. Hartley walked remarkably soon and, therefore, learnt to talk remarkably late.
Anti-optimism! Praised be our Maker, and to the honour of human nature is it, that we may truly call this an inhuman opinion. Man strives after good.
Materialists unwilling to admit the mysterious element of our nature make it all mysterious—nothing mysterious in nerves, eyes, &c., but that nerves think, etc.! Stir up the sediment into the transparent water, and so make all opaque.
1797-1801
As we recede from anthropomorphism we must go either to the Trinity or Pantheism. The Fathers who were Unitarians were anthropomorphites.
EGOTISM January 1801
Empirics are boastful and egotists because they introduce real or apparent novelty, which excites great opposition, [while] personal opposition creates re-action (which is of course a consciousness of power) associated with the person re-acting. Paracelsus was a boaster, it is true; so were the French Jacobins, and Wolff, though not a boaster, was persecuted into a habit of egotism in his philosophical writings; so Dr. John Brown, and Milton in his prose works; and those, in similar circumstances, who, from prudence, abstain from egotism in their writings are still egotists among their friends. It would be unnatural effort not to be so, and egotism in such cases is by no means offensive to a kind and discerning man.
Some flatter themselves that they abhor egotism, and do not suffer it to appear primâ facie, either in their writings or conversation, however much and however personally they or their opinions have been opposed. What now? Observe, watch those men; their habits of feeling and thinking are made up of contempt, which is the concentrated vinegar of egotism—it is lætitia mixta cum odio, a notion of the weakness of another conjoined with a notion of our own comparative strength, though that weakness is still strong enough to be troublesome to us, though not formidable.
"—and the deep power of Joy
We see into the Life of Things."
THE EGO
By deep feeling we make our ideas dim, and this is what we mean by our life, ourselves. I think of the wall—it is before me a distinct image. Here I necessarily think of the idea and the thinking I as two distinct and opposite things. Now let me think of myself, of the thinking being. The idea becomes dim, whatever it be—so dim that I know not what it is; but the feeling is deep and steady, and this I call I—identifying the percipient and the perceived.
"O Thou! whose fancies from afar are brought."
March 17, 1801, Tuesday
1797-1801
Hartley, looking out of my study window, fixed his eyes steadily and for some time on the opposite prospect and said, "Will yon mountains always be?" I shewed him the whole magnificent prospect in a looking-glass, and held it up, so that the whole was like a canopy or ceiling over his head, and he struggled to express himself concerning the difference between the thing and the image almost with convulsive effort. I never before saw such an abstract of thinking as a pure act and energy—of thinking as distinguished from thought.
GIORDANO BRUNO
Monday, April 1801, and Tuesday, read two works of Giordano Bruno, with one title-page: Jordani Bruni Nolani de Monade, Numero et Figurâ liber consequens. Quinque de Minimo, Magno et Mensurâ. Item. De Innumerabilibus Immenso, et Infigurabili seu de Universo et Mundis libri octo. Francofurti, Apud Joan. Wechelum et Petrum Fischerum consortes, 1591.
Then follows the dedication, then the index of contents of the whole volume, at the end of which index is a Latin ode, conceived with great dignity and grandeur of thought. Then the work De Monade, Numero et Figurâ, secretioris nempe Physicæ, Mathematicæ, et Metaphysicæ elementa commences, which, as well as the eight books De Innumerabili, &c., is a poem in Latin hexameters, divided (each book) into chapters, and to each chapter is affixed a prose commentary. If the five books de Minimo, &c., to which this book is consequent are of the same character, I lost nothing in not having it. As to the work De Monade, it was far too numerical, lineal and Pythagorean for my comprehension. It read very much like Thomas Taylor and Proclus, &c. I by no means think it certain that there is no meaning in these works. Nor do I presume even to suppose that the meaning is of no value (till I understand a man's ignorance I presume myself ignorant of his understanding), but it is for others, at present, not for me. Sir P. Sidney and Fulk Greville shut the doors at their philosophical conferences with Bruno. If his conversation resembled this book, I should have thought he would have talked with a trumpet.
The poems and commentaries, in the De Immenso et Innumerabili are of a different character. The commesntary is a very sublime enunciation of the dignity of the human soul, according to the principles of Plato.
[Here follows the passage, "Anima Sapiens ——ubique totus," quoted in The Friend (Coleridge's Works, ii. 109), together with a brief résumé of Bruno's other works. See, too, Biographia Literaria, chapter ix. (Coleridge's Works, iii. 249).]
OBSERVATIONS AND REFLECTIONS
The spring with the little tiny cone of loose sand ever rising and sinking at the bottom, but its surface without a wrinkle.
Monday, September 14, 1801
Northern lights remarkably fine—chiefly a purple-blue—in shooting pyramids, moved from over Bassenthwaite behind Skiddaw. Derwent's birthday, one year old.
September 15, 1801
Observed the great half moon setting behind the mountain ridge, and watched the shapes its various segments presented as it slowly sunk—first the foot of a boot, all but the heel—then a little pyramid ∆—then a star of the first magnitude—indeed, it was not distinguishable from the evening star at its largest—then rapidly a smaller, a small, a very small star—and, as it diminished in size, so it grew paler in tint. And now where is it? Unseen—but a little fleecy cloud hangs above the mountain ridge, and is rich in amber light.
I do not wish you to act from those truths. No! still and always act from your feelings; but only meditate often on these truths, that sometime or other they may become your feelings.
The state should be to the religions under its protection as a well-drawn picture, equally eyeing all in the room.
Quære, whether or no too great definiteness of terms in any language may not consume too much of the vital and idea-creating force in distinct, clear, full-made images, and so prevent originality. For original might be distinguished from positive thought.
The thing that causes instability in a particular state, of itself causes stability. For instance, wet soap slips off the ledge—detain it till it dries a little, and it sticks.
Is there anything in the idea that citizens are fonder of good eating and rustics of strong drink—the one from the rarity of all such things, the other from the uniformity of his life?
October 19, 1801
