part I

. p. 131.

[90] See the second 'Lay Sermon,' Bohn's edition, pp. 406-7.--ED.

[91] See Coleridge's 'Table Talk,' April 4, 1832, On Unitarianism.--ED.

[92] I do not answer for the corrupt Latin.

[93] See 'The Friend,' Bohn's edition, pp. 95-100, and 319-27.--ED.

ON THE DIFFERENCE IN KIND OF REASON

AND THE UNDERSTANDING.

SCHEME OF THE ARGUMENT.

On the contrary, Reason is the Power of Universal and necessary Convictions, the Source and Substance of Truths above Sense, and having their evidence in themselves. Its presence is always marked by the _necessity_ of the position affirmed: this necessity being _conditional_, when a truth of Reason is applied to Facts of Experience, or to the rules and maxims of the Understanding; but _absolute_, when the subject matter is itself the growth or offspring of the Reason. Hence arises a distinction in the Reason itself, derived from the different mode of applying it, and from the objects to which it is directed: accordingly as we consider one and the same gift, now as the ground of formal principles, and now as the origin of _ideas_. Contemplated distinctively in reference to _formal_ (or abstract) truth, it is the _speculative_ reason; but in reference to _actual_ (or moral) truth, as the fountain of ideas, and the _light_ of the conscience, we name it the _practical_ reason. Whenever by self-subjection to this universal light, the will of the individual, the _particular_ will, has become a will of reason, the man is regenerate: and reason is then the _spirit_ of the regenerated man, whereby the person is capable of a quickening inter-communion with the Divine Spirit. And herein consists the mystery of Redemption, that this has been rendered possible for us. _And so it is written: the first man Adam, was made a living soul, the last Adam a quickening Spirit._ (1 Cor. xv. 45.) We need only compare the passages in the writings of the Apostles Paul and John, concerning the _spirit_ and spiritual Gifts, with those in the Proverbs and in the Wisdom of Solomon respecting _reason_, to be convinced that the terms are synonymous.[94] In this at once most comprehensive and most appropriate acceptation of the word, reason is pre-eminently spiritual, and a spirit, even _our_ spirit, through an effluence of the same grace by which we are privileged to say Our Father!

On the other hand, the Judgments of the Understanding are binding only in relation to the objects of our Senses, which we _reflect_ under the forms of the Understanding. It is, as Leighton rightly defines it, "the faculty judging according to sense." Hence we add the epithet _human_, without tautology: and speak of the _human_ understanding, in disjunction from that of beings higher or lower than man. But there is, in this sense, no _human_ reason. There neither is nor can be but one reason, one and the same: even the light that lighteth every man's individual Understanding (_Discursus_), and thus maketh it a reasonable understanding, _discourse of reason--one only_, yet _manifold: it goeth through all understanding, and remaining in itself regenerateth all other powers_. The same writer calls it likewise _an influence from the Glory of the Almighty_, this being one of the names of the Messiah, as the _Logos_, or co-eternal Filial Word. And most noticeable for its coincidence is a fragment of Heraclitus, as I have indeed already noticed elsewhere;--"To discourse rationally it behoves us to derive strength from that which is common to all men: for all human Understandings are nourished by the one DIVINE WORD."

Beasts, we have said, partake of understanding. If any man deny this, there is a ready way of settling the question. Let him give a careful perusal to Hüber's two small volumes, on bees and ants (especially the latter), and to Kirby and Spence's Introduction to Entomology; and one or other of two things must follow. He will either change his opinion as irreconcilable with the facts; or he must deny the facts, which yet I cannot suppose, inasmuch as the denial would be tantamount to the no less extravagant than uncharitable assertion, that Hüber, and the several eminent naturalists, French and English, Swiss, German, and Italian, by whom Hüber's observations and experiments have been repeated and confirmed, had all conspired to impose a series of falsehoods and fairy-tales on the world. I see no way at least, by which he can get out of this dilemma, but by over-leaping the admitted rules and fences of all legitimate discussion, and either transferring to the word, Understanding, the definition already appropriated to Reason, or defining Understanding _in genere_ by the _specific_ and _accessional_ perfections which the _human_ understanding derives from its co-existence with reason and free-will in the same individual person; in plainer words, from its being exercised by a self-conscious and responsible creature. And, after all, the supporter of Harrington's position would have a right to ask him, by what other name he would designate the faculty in the instances referred to? If it be not Understanding, what is it?

In no former part of this volume has the author felt the same anxiety to obtain a patient attention. For he does not hesitate to avow, that on his success in establishing the validity and importance of the distinction between Reason and Understanding, he rests his hopes of carrying the reader along with him through all that is to follow. Let the student but clearly see and comprehend the diversity in the things themselves, the expediency of a correspondent distinction and appropriation of the _words_ will follow of itself. Turn back for a moment to the Aphorism, and having re-perused the first paragraph of this Comment thereon, regard the two following narratives as the illustration. I do not say proof: for I take these from a multitude of facts equally striking for the one only purpose of placing my _meaning_ out of all doubt.

I. Hüber put a dozen bumble-bees under a bell-glass along with a comb of about ten silken cocoons so unequal in height as not to be capable of standing steadily. To remedy this two or three of the bumble-bees got upon the comb, stretched themselves over its edge, and with their heads downwards fixed their fore-feet on the table on which the comb stood, and so with their hind-feet kept the comb from falling. When these were weary, others took their places. In this constrained and painful posture, fresh bees relieving their comrades at intervals, and each working in its turn, did these affectionate little insects support the comb for nearly three days: at the end of which they had prepared sufficient wax to build pillars with. But these pillars having accidentally got displaced, the bees had recourse again to the same manœuvre till Hüber, pitying their hard case, &c.

II. "I shall at present describe the operations of a single ant that I observed sufficiently long to satisfy my curiosity. One rainy day, I observed a labourer digging the ground near the aperture which gave entrance to the ant-hill. It placed in a heap the several fragments it had scraped up, and formed them into small pellets, which it deposited here and there upon the nest. It returned constantly to the same place, and appeared to have a marked design, for it laboured with ardour and perseverance. I remarked a slight furrow, excavated in the ground in a straight line, representing the plan of a path or gallery. The Labourer, the whole of whose movements fell under my immediate observation, gave it greater depth and breadth, and cleared out its borders: and I saw at length, in which I could not be deceived, that it had the intention of establishing an avenue which was to lead from one of the stories to the underground chambers. This path, which was about two or three inches in length, and formed by a single ant, was opened above and bordered on each side by a buttress of earth; its concavity _en forme de gouttière_ was of the most perfect regularity, for the architect had not left an atom too much. The work of this ant was so well followed and understood, that I could almost to a certainty guess its next proceeding, and the very fragment it was about to remove. At the side of the opening where this path terminated, was a second opening to which it was necessary to arrive by some road. The same ant engaged in and executed alone this undertaking. It furrowed out and opened another path, parallel to the first, leaving between each a little wall of three or four lines in height. Those ants who lay the foundation of a wall, chamber, or gallery, from working separately, occasion now and then a want of coincidence in the parts of the same or different objects. Such examples are of no unfrequent occurrence, but they by no means embarrass them. What follows proves that the workman, on discovering his error, knew how to rectify it. A wall had been erected with the view of sustaining a vaulted ceiling, still incomplete, that had been projected from the wall of the opposite chamber. The workman who began constructing it, had given it too little elevation to meet the opposite partition upon which it was to rest. Had it been continued on the original plan, it must infallibly have met the wall at about one half of its height, and this it was necessary to avoid. This state of things very forcibly claimed my attention, when one of the ants arriving at the place, and visiting the works, appeared to be struck by the difficulty which presented itself; but this it as soon obviated, by taking down the ceiling and raising the wall upon which it reposed. It then, in my presence, constructed a new ceiling with the fragments of the former one."--_Hüber's Natural History of Ants_, p. 38-41.

Now I assert, that the faculty manifested in the acts here narrated does not differ _in kind_ from Understanding, and that it _does_ so differ from Reason. What I conceive the former to be, physiologically considered, will be shown hereafter. In this place I take the understanding as it exists in _men_, and in exclusive reference to its _intelligential_ functions; and it is in this sense of the word that I am to prove the necessity of contra-distinguishing it from reason.

Premising then, that two or more subjects having the same essential characters are said to fall under the same general definition, I lay it down, as a self-evident truth,--(it is, in fact, an identical proposition) that whatever subjects fall under one and the same general definition are of one and the same kind: consequently, that which does _not_ fall under this definition, must differ in kind from each and all of those that _do_. Difference in degree does indeed suppose sameness in kind; and difference in kind precludes distinction from difference of degree. _Heterogenea non comparari, ergo nec distingui, possunt._ The inattention to this rule gives rise to the numerous sophisms comprised by Aristotle under the head of μεταβασισ εις αλλο γενος, that is, transition into a new kind, or the falsely applying to X what had been truly asserted of A, and might have been true of X, had it differed from A in its degree only. The sophistry consists in the omission to notice what not being noticed will be supposed not to exist; and where the silence respecting the difference in kind is tantamount to an assertion that the difference is merely in degree. But the fraud is especially gross, where the heterogeneous subject, thus clandestinely _slipt in_, is in its own nature insusceptible of degree: such as, for instance, Certainty, or Circularity, contrasted with Strength, or Magnitude.

To apply these remarks for our present purpose, we have only to describe Understanding and Reason, each by its characteristic qualities. The comparison will show the difference.

UNDERSTANDING. REASON.

1. Understanding is discursive. 1. Reason is fixed.

2. The Understanding in 2. The Reason in all its decisions all its judgments refers to appeals to itself, as the ground some other Faculty as its and _substance_ of their truth. ultimate Authority. (Hebrews vi. 13.)

3. Understanding is the 3. Reason of Contemplation. Faculty of _Reflection_. Reason indeed is much nearer to SENSE than to Understanding: for Reason (says our great HOOKER) is a direct aspect of Truth, an inward Beholding, having a similar relation to the Intelligible or Spiritual, as SENSE has to the Material or Phenomenal.

The Result is: that neither falls under the definition of the other. They differ _in kind_: and had my object been confined to the establishment of this fact, the preceding columns would have superseded all further disquisition. But I have ever in view the especial interest of my youthful readers, whose reflective _power_ is to be cultivated, as well as their particular reflections to be called forth and guided. Now the main chance of their _reflecting_ on religious subjects _aright_, and of their attaining to the _contemplation_ of spiritual truths _at all_, rests on their insight into the _nature_ of this disparity still more than on their conviction of its existence. I now, therefore, proceed to a brief analysis of the Understanding, in elucidation of the definitions already given.

The Understanding then (considered exclusively as an organ of human intelligence,) is the faculty by which we reflect and generalize. Take, for instance, any objects consisting of many parts, a house, or a group of houses: and if it be contemplated, as a Whole, that is, as many constituting a one, it forms what in the technical language of Psychology, is called a _total impression_. Among the various component parts of this, we direct our attention especially to such as we recollect to have noticed in other total impressions. Then, by a voluntary act, we withhold our attention from all the rest to reflect exclusively on these; and these we henceforward use as _common characters_, by virtue of which the several objects are referred to one and the same sort.[95] Thus, the whole process may be reduced to three acts, all depending on and supposing a previous impression on the senses: first, the appropriation of our Attention; second, (and in order to the continuance of the first) Abstraction, or the voluntary withholding of the Attention; and third, Generalization. And these are the proper Functions of the Understanding: and the power of so doing, is what we mean, when we say we possess Understanding, or are created with the faculty of Understanding.

[It is obvious, that the third function includes the act of comparing one object with another. In a note (for, not to interrupt the argument, I avail myself of this most useful contrivance,) I have shown, that the act of comparing supposes in the comparing faculty, certain inherent forms, that is, modes of reflecting not referable to the objects reflected on, but pre-determined by the constitution and (as it were) mechanism of the Understanding itself. And under some one or other of these forms,[96] the resemblances and differences must be subsumed in order to be conceivable, and _a fortiori_ therefore in order to be comparable. The senses do not compare, but merely furnish the materials for comparison. But this the reader will find explained in the note; and will now cast his eye back to the sentence immediately preceding this parenthesis.]

Now when a person speaking to us of any particular Object or Appearance refers it by means of some common character to a known class (which he does in giving it a Name), we say, that we understand him; that is, we understand his words. The Name of a thing, in the original sense of the word Name, (_nomen_, νουμενον, το _intelligible_, _id quod intelligitur_) expresses that which is _understood_ in an appearance, that which we place (or make to _stand_) _under_ it, as the condition of its real existence, and in proof that it is not an accident of the senses, or affection of the individual, not a phantom or _apparition_, that is, an appearance that is _only_ an appearance. (See Gen. ii. 19, 20, and in Psalm xx. 1, and in many other places of the Bible, the identity of _nomen_ with _numen_, that is, invisible power and presence, the _nomen substantivum_ of all real objects, and the ground of their reality, independently of the affections of sense in the percipient). In like manner, in a connected succession of names, as the speaker passes from the one to the other, we say that we can understand his _discourse_ (_discursio intellectûs, discursus_, his passing rapidly from one thing to another). Thus, in all instances, it is words, names, or, if images, yet images used as words or names, that are the only and exclusive subjects of Understanding. In no instance do we understand a thing in itself; but only the name to which it is referred. Sometimes indeed, when several classes are recalled conjointly, we identify the words with the object--though by courtesy of idiom rather than in strict propriety of language. Thus we may say that we _understand_ a rainbow, when recalling successively the several Names for the several sorts of colours, we know that they are to be applied to one and the same _phenomenon_, at once distinctly and simultaneously; but even in common speech we should not say this of a single colour. No one would say he understands red or blue. He _sees_ the colour, and had seen it before in a vast number and variety of objects; and he understands the _word_ red, as referring his fancy or memory to this his collective experience.

If this be so, and so it most assuredly is--if the proper functions of the Understanding be that of generalizing the notices received from the senses in order to the construction of _names_: of referring particular notices (that is, impressions or sensations) to their proper names; and, _vice versâ_, names to their correspondent class or kind of notices--then it follows of necessity, that the Understanding is truly and accurately defined in the words of Leighton and Kant, a "faculty judging according to sense."

Now whether in defining the speculative Reason (that is, the Reason considered abstractedly as an _intellective_ power) we call it "the source of necessary and universal principles, according to which the notices of the senses are either affirmed or denied;" or describe it as "the power by which we are enabled to draw from particular and contingent appearances universal and necessary conclusions:"[97] it is equally evident that the two definitions differ in their essential characters, and consequently the subjects differ in _kind_.

The dependence of the Understanding on the representations of the senses, and its consequent posteriority thereto, as contrasted with the independence and antecedency of Reason, are strikingly exemplified in the Ptolemaic System (that truly wonderful product and highest boast of the faculty, judging according to the senses!) compared with the Newtonian, as the offspring of a yet higher power, arranging, correcting, and annulling the representations of the senses according to its own inherent laws and constitutive ideas.

[94] See Wisd. of Sol. vii. 22, 23, 27.--H. N. C.

[95] Accordingly as we attend more or less to the differences, the _sort_ becomes, of course, more or less comprehensive. Hence there arises for the systematic naturalist, the necessity of subdividing the sorts into orders, classes, families, &c.: all which, however, resolve themselves for the mere logician into the conception of _genus_ and _species_, _i.e._ the comprehending and the comprehended.

[96] Were it not so, how could the first comparison have been possible?--It would involve the absurdity of measuring a thing by itself. But if we think on some one thing, the length of our own foot, or of our hand and arm from the elbow joint, it is evident that in _order_ to do this, we must have the conception of measure. Now these antecedent and most general conceptions are what is meant by the constituent _forms_ of the Understanding: we call them _constituent_ because they are not _acquired_ by the Understanding, but are implied in its constitution. As rationally might a circle be said to acquire a centre and circumference, as the Understanding to acquire these, its inherent _forms_, or ways of conceiving. This is what Leibnitz meant, when to the old adage of the Peripatetics, _Nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu_ (There is nothing in the Understanding not derived from the Senses, or--There is nothing _con_ceived that was not previously _per_ceived;) he replied--_præter intellectum ipsum_ (except the Understanding itself).

And here let me remark for once and all: whoever would _reflect_ to any purpose--whoever is in earnest in his pursuit of Self-knowledge, and of one of the principal means to this, an insight into the meaning of the words he uses, and the different meanings properly or improperly conveyed by one and the same word, accordingly as it is used in the schools or the market, accordingly as the _kind_ or a high _degree_ is intended (for example, heat, weight, and the like, as employed scientifically, compared with the same word used popularly)--whoever, I say, seriously proposes this as his object, must so far overcome his dislike of pedantry, and his dread of being sneered at as a pedant, as not to quarrel with an uncouth word or phrase, till he is quite sure that some other and more familiar one would not only have expressed the _precise_ meaning with equal clearness, but have been as likely to draw attention to _this_ meaning exclusively. The ordinary language of a Philosopher in conversation or popular writings, compared with the language he uses in strict reasoning, is as his watch compared with the chronometer in his observatory. He sets the former by the Town-clock, or even, perhaps, by the Dutch clock in his kitchen, not because he believes it right, but because his neighbours and his cook _go_ by it. To afford the reader an opportunity for exercising the forbearance here recommended, I turn back to the phrase, "most general conceptions," and observe, that in strict and severe propriety of language I should have said _generalific_ or _generific_ rather than general, and concipiences or conceptive acts rather than conceptions.

It is an old complaint, that a man of genius no sooner appears, but the host of dunces are up in arms to repel the invading alien. This observation would have made more converts to its truth, I suspect, had it been worded more dispassionately, and with a less contemptuous antithesis. For "dunces," let us substitute "the many," or the "ουτος κοσμος" (_this world_) of the Apostle, and we shall perhaps find no great difficulty in accounting for the fact. To arrive at the _root_, indeed, and last ground of the problem, it would be necessary to investigate the nature and effects of the sense of difference on the human mind where it is not holden in check by reason and reflection. We need not go to the savage tribes of North America, or the yet ruder natives of the Indian Isles, to learn, how slight a degree of difference will, in uncultivated minds, call up a sense of diversity, and inward perplexity and contradiction, as if the strangers were, and yet were not, of the same _kind_ with themselves. Who has not had occasion to observe the effect which the gesticulations and nasal tones of a Frenchman produce on our own vulgar? Here we may see the origin and primary import of our _unkindness_. It is a sense of _un_kind, and not the mere negation but the positive Opposite of the sense of _kind_. Alienation, aggravated now by fear, now by contempt, and not seldom by a mixture of both, aversion, hatred, enmity, are so many successive shapes of its growth and metamorphosis.--In application to the present case, it is sufficient to say, that Pindar's remark on sweet music holds equally true of genius: as many as are not delighted by it are disturbed, perplexed, irritated. The beholder either recognizes it as a projected form of his own Being, that moves before him with a Glory round its head, or recoils from it as from a Spectre. But this speculation would lead me too far; I must be content with having referred to it as the ultimate ground of the fact, and pass to the more obvious and proximate causes. And as the first, I would rank the person's _not_ understanding what yet he expects to understand, and as if he had a right to do so. An original mathematical work, or any other that requires peculiar and (so to say) technical marks and symbols, will excite no uneasy feelings--not in the mind of a competent reader, for he understands it; and not with others, because they neither expect nor are expected to understand it. The second place we may assign to the _mis_understanding, which is almost sure to follow in cases where the incompetent person, finding no outward marks (diagrams, arbitrary signs, and the like) to inform him at first sight, that the subject is one which he does not pretend to understand, and to be ignorant of which does not detract from his estimation as a man of abilities generally, _will_ attach some meaning to what he hears or reads; and as he is out of humour with the author, it will most often be such a meaning as he can quarrel with and exhibit in a ridiculous or offensive point of view.

But above all, the whole world almost of minds, as far as we regard intellectual efforts, may be divided into two classes of the Busy-indolent and Lazy-indolent. To both alike all Thinking is painful, and all attempts to rouse them to think, whether in the re-examination of their existing convictions, or for the reception of new light, are irritating. "It _may_ all be very deep and clever; but really one ought to be quite sure of it before one wrenches one's brain to find out what it is. I take up a Book as a Companion, with whom I can have an easy cheerful chit-chat on what we both know beforehand, or else matters of fact. In our leisure hours we have a right to relaxation and amusement."

Well! but in their _studious_ hours, when their bow is to be bent, when they are _apud Musas_, or amidst the Muses? Alas! it is just the same! The same craving for _amusement_, that is, to be away from the Muses! for relaxation, that is, the unbending of a bow which in fact had never been strung! There are two ways of obtaining their applause. The first is: Enable them to reconcile in one and the same occupation the love of Sloth and the hatred of Vacancy! Gratify indolence, and yet save them from _ennui_--in plain English, from themselves! For, spite of their antipathy to _dry_ reading, the keeping company with themselves is, after all, the insufferable annoyance: and the true secret of their dislike to a work of thought and inquiry lies in its tendency to make them acquainted with their own permanent Being. The other road to their favour is, to introduce to them their own thoughts and predilections, tricked out in the _fine_ language, in which it would gratify their vanity to express them in their own conversation, and with which they can imagine themselves _showing off:_ and this (as has been elsewhere remarked) is the characteristic difference between the second-rate writers of the last two or three generations, and the same class under Elizabeth and the Stuarts. In the latter we find the most far-fetched and singular thoughts in the simplest and most native language; in the former, the most obvious and common-place thoughts in the most far-fetched and motley language. But lastly, and as the _sine quâ non_ of their patronage, a sufficient arc must be left for the Reader's mind to _oscillate_ in--freedom of choice,

To make the shifting cloud be what you please,

save only where the attraction of curiosity determines the line of motion. The attention must not be fastened down: and this every work of genius, not simply narrative, must do before it can be justly appreciated.

In former times a _popular_ work meant one that adapted the _results_ of studious meditation or scientific research to the capacity of the people, presenting in the concrete, by instances and examples, what had been ascertained in the abstract and by discovery of the Law. _Now_, on the other hand, that is a popular work which gives back to the people their own errors and prejudices, and flatters the many by creating them, under the title of THE PUBLIC, into a supreme and inappellable Tribunal of intellectual Excellence. P.S. In a continuous work, the frequent insertion and length of Notes would need an Apology: in a book like this of Aphorisms and detached Comments none is necessary, it being understood beforehand, that the sauce and the garnish are to occupy the greater part of the dish.

[97] Take a familiar illustration. My sight and touch convey to me a certain impression, to which my Understanding applies its pre-conceptions (_conceptus antecedentes et generalissimi_) of quantity and relation, and thus refers it to the class and name of three-cornered bodies--we will suppose it the iron of a turf-spade. It compares the sides, and finds that any two measured as one are greater than the third; and according to a law of the imagination, there arises a presumption that in all other bodies of the same figure (that is, three-cornered and equilateral) the same proportion exists. After this, the senses have been directed successively to a number of three-cornered bodies of _unequal_ sides--and in these too the same proportion has been found without exception, till at length it becomes a fact of _experience_, that in _all_ triangles hitherto seen, the two sides together are greater than the third: and there will exist no ground or analogy for anticipating an exception to a rule, generalized from so vast a number of particular instances. So far and no farther could the Understanding carry us: and as far as this "the faculty, judging according to sense," conducts many of the _inferior_ animals, if not in the same, yet in instances analogous and fully equivalent.

The Reason supersedes the whole process, and on the first conception presented by the Understanding in consequence of the first sight of a tri-angular figure, of whatever sort it might chance to be, it affirms with an assurance incapable of future increase, with a perfect _certainty_, that in all possible triangles any two of the inclosing lines _will_ and _must_ be greater than the third. In short, Understanding in its highest form of experience remains commensurate with the experimental notices of the senses from which it is generalized. Reason, on the other hand, either predetermines Experience, or avails itself of a past Experience to supersede its necessity in all future time; and affirms truths which no sense could perceive, nor experiment verify, nor experience confirm.

Yea, this is the test and character of a truth so affirmed, that in its own proper form it is _inconceivable_. For _to conceive_ is a function of the Understanding, which can be exercised only on subjects subordinate thereto. And yet to the forms of the Understanding all truth must be reduced, that is to be fixed as an object of reflection, and to be rendered _expressible_. And here we have a second test and sign of a truth so affirmed, that it can come forth out of the moulds of the Understanding only in the disguise of two contradictory conceptions, each of which is partially true, and the conjunction of both conceptions becomes the representative or _expression_ (the _exponent_) of a truth _beyond_ conception and inexpressible. Examples: Before Abraham _was_, I _am_.--God is a Circle, the centre of which is everywhere, and circumference nowhere. The soul is all in every part.

If this appear extravagant, it is an extravagance which no man can indeed learn from another, but which, (were this possible,) I might have learnt from Plato, Kepler, and Bacon; from Luther, Hooker, Pascal, Leibnitz, and Fénélon. But in this last paragraph I have, I see, unwittingly overstepped my purpose, according to which we were to take Reason as a simply intellectual power. Yet even as such, and with all the disadvantage of a technical and arbitrary Abstraction, it has been made evident--1. that there is an _Intuition_ or _im_mediate Beholding, accompanied by a conviction of the necessity and universality of the truth so beholden not derived from the senses, which intuition, when it is _construed_ by _pure_ sense, gives birth to the Science of Mathematics, and when applied to objects supersensuous or spiritual is the organ of Theology and Philosophy:--and 2. that there is likewise a reflective and discursive faculty, or _mediate_ Apprehension which, taken by itself and uninfluenced by the former, depends on the senses for the materials, on which it is exercised, and is contained within the sphere of the senses. And this faculty it is, which in generalizing the notices of the senses constitutes Sensible Experience, and gives rise to Maxims or Rules which may become more and more _general_, but can never be raised into universal Verities, or beget a consciousness of absolute Certainty; though they may be sufficient to extinguish all doubt. (Putting Revelation out of view, take our first progenitor in the 50th or 100th year of his existence. His experience would probably have freed him from all doubt, as the sun sank in the horizon that it would re-appear the next morning. But compare this state of assurance with that which the same man would have had of the 37th Proposition of Euclid, supposing him, like Pythagoras, to have discovered the _Demonstration_.) Now is it expedient, I ask, or conformable to the laws and purposes of language, to call two so altogether disparate subjects by one and the same name? Or, having two names in our language, should we call each of the two diverse subjects by both--that is, by either name, as caprice might dictate? If not, then, as we have the two words, Reason and Understanding (as indeed what language of cultivated man has not?) what should prevent us from appropriating the former to the Power distinctive of humanity? We need only place the derivatives from the two terms in opposition (for example, "A and B are both rational beings; but there is no comparison between them in point of _intelligence_;" or "She always concludes _rationally_, though not a woman of much _understanding_") to see that we cannot reverse the order--_i.e._ call the higher gift Understanding, and the lower Reason. What _should_ prevent us? I asked. Alas! that which _has_ prevented us--the _cause_ of this confusion in the terms--is only too obvious; namely, inattention to the momentous distinction in the _things_, and (generally) to the duty and habit recommended in the fifth Introductory Aphorism of this volume, (_see_ p. 2). But the cause of this, and of all its lamentable effects and subcauses, _false doctrine_, _blindness of heart and contempt of the word_, is best declared by the philosophic Apostle: _they did not_ like _to retain God in their knowledge_, (Rom. i.28,) and though they could not _extinguish the light that lighteth every man_, and which _shone in the darkness_; yet because the darkness could not _comprehend_ the light, they refused to bear witness of the light, and worshipped, instead, the shaping mist, which the light had drawn upward from _the ground_ (that is, from the mere animal nature and instinct), and which that light alone had made visible, that is, by superinducing on the animal instinct the principle of Self-consciousness.

APHORISM IX.

In Wonder all Philosophy began: in Wonder it ends: and Admiration fills up the interspace. But the first Wonder is the offspring of Ignorance: the last is the parent of Adoration. The first is the birth-throe of our knowledge: the last is its euthanasy and _apotheosis_.

_Sequelæ: or Thoughts suggested by the preceding Aphorism._

As in respect of the first wonder we are all on the same level, how comes it that the philosophic mind should, in all ages, be the privilege of a few? The most obvious reason is this: The wonder takes place before the period of reflection, and (with the great mass of mankind) long before the individual is capable of directing his attention freely and consciously to the feeling, or even to its exciting causes. Surprise (the form and dress which the Wonder of Ignorance usually puts on) is worn away, if not precluded, by custom and familiarity. So is it with the objects of the senses, and the ways and fashions of the world around us; even as with the beat of our own hearts, which we notice only in moments of fear and perturbation. But with regard to the concerns of our inward being, there is yet another cause that acts in concert with the power in custom to prevent a fair and equal exertion of reflective thought. The great fundamental truths and doctrines of religion, the existence and attributes of God, and the life after death, are in Christian countries taught so early, under such circumstances, and in such close and vital association with whatever makes or marks _reality_ for our infant minds, that the words ever after represent sensations, feelings, vital assurances, sense of reality--rather than thoughts, or any distinct conception. Associated, I had almost said _identified_, with the parental voice, look, touch, with the living warmth and pressure of the Mother, on whose lap the child is first made to kneel, within whose palms its little hands are folded, and the motion of whose eyes _its_ eyes follow and imitate--(yea, what the blue sky is to the mother, the mother's upraised eyes and brow are to the child, the Type and Symbol of an invisible Heaven!)--from within and without, these great First Truths, these good and gracious Tidings, these holy and humanizing Spells, in the preconformity to which our very humanity may be said to consist, are so infused, that it were but a tame and inadequate expression to say, we all take them for granted. At a later period, in youth or early manhood, most of us, indeed, (in the higher and middle classes at least) read or hear certain PROOFS of these truths--which we commonly listen to, when we listen at all, with much the same feelings as a popular Prince on his Coronation Day, in the centre of a fond and rejoicing nation, may be supposed to hear the Champion's challenge to all the non-existents, that deny or dispute his Rights and Royalty. In fact, the order of Proof is most often reversed or transposed. As far, at least as I dare judge from the goings on in my own mind, when with keen delight I first read the works of Derham, Nieuwentiet, and Lyonet, I should say, that the full and life-like conviction of a gracious Creator is the Proof (at all events, performs the office and answers all the purpose of a Proof) of the wisdom and benevolence in the construction of the Creature.

Do I blame this? Do I wish it to be otherwise? God forbid! It is only one of its accidental, but too frequent consequences, of which I complain, and against which I protest. I regret nothing that tends to make the Light become the Life of men, even as the Life in the eternal Word is their only and single true light. But I do regret, that in after years--when by occasion of some new dispute on some old heresy, or any other accident, the attention has for the first time been distinctly attracted to the super-structure raised on these fundamental truths, or to truths of later revelation supplemental of these and not less important--all the doubts and difficulties, that cannot but arise where the Understanding, _the mind of the flesh_, is made the measure of spiritual things; all the sense of strangeness and seeming contradiction in terms; all the marvel and the mystery, that belong equally to both, are first thought of and applied in objection exclusively to the latter. I would disturb no man's faith in the great articles of the (falsely so called) Religion of Nature. But before the man rejects, and calls on other men to reject, the revelations of the Gospel and the Religion of all Christendom, I would have him place himself in the state and under all the privations of a Simonides, when in the fortieth day of his meditation the sage and philosophic poet abandoned the problem in despair. Ever and anon he seemed to have hold of the truth; but when he asked himself what he meant by it, it escaped from him, or resolved itself into meanings, that destroyed each other. I would have the sceptic, while yet a sceptic only, seriously consider whether a doctrine, of the truth of which a Socrates could obtain no other assurance than what he derived from his strong _wish_ that it should be true; and which Plato found a mystery hard to discover, and when discovered, communicable only to the fewest of men; can, consonantly with history or common sense, be classed among the articles, the belief of which is ensured to all men by their mere common sense? Whether, without gross outrage to fact, they can be said to constitute a Religion of Nature, or a Natural Theology antecedent to Revelation, or superseding its necessity? Yes! in prevention (for there is little chance, I fear, of a _cure_) of the pugnacious dogmatism of _partial_ reflection, I would prescribe to every man, who feels a commencing alienation from the Catholic Faith, and whose studies and attainments authorise him to argue on the subject at all, a patient and thoughtful perusal of the arguments and representations which Bayle supposes to have passed through the mind of Simonides. Or I should be fully satisfied if I could induce these eschewers of mystery to give a patient, manly, and impartial perusal to the single Treatise of Pomponatius, _De Fato_.[98]

When they have fairly and satisfactorily overthrown the objections and cleared away the difficulties urged by this sharp-witted Italian against the doctrines which they profess to retain, then let them commence their attack on those which they reject. As far as the supposed irrationality of the latter is the ground of argument, I am much deceived if, on reviewing their forces, they would not find the ranks woefully thinned by the success of their own fire in the preceding engagement--unless, indeed, by pure heat of controversy, and to storm the lines of their antagonists, they can bring to life again the arguments which they had themselves killed off in the defence of their own positions. In vain shall we seek for any other mode of meeting the broad facts of the scientific Epicurean, or the requisitions and queries of the all-analysing Pyrrhonist, than by challenging the tribunal to which they appeal, as incompetent to try the question. In order to _non-suit_ the infidel plaintiff, we must remove the cause from the faculty, that judges according to sense, and whose judgments, therefore, are valid only on objects of sense, to the Superior Courts of Conscience and intuitive Reason! _The words I speak unto you, are Spirit_, and such only _are life_, that is, have an inward and actual power abiding in them.

But the same truth is at once shield and bow. The shaft of Atheism glances aside from it to strike and pierce the breast-plate of the heretic. Well for the latter, if plucking the weapon from the wound he recognizes an arrow from his own quiver, and abandons a cause that connects him with such confederates! Without further rhetoric, the sum and substance of the argument is this:--an insight into the proper functions and subaltern rank of the Understanding may not, indeed, disarm the Psilanthropist of his metaphorical glosses, or of his _versions_ fresh from the forge, and with no other stamp than the private mark of the individual manufacturer; but it will deprive him of the only rational pretext for having recourse to tools so liable to abuse, and of such perilous example.

COMMENT.

Since the preceding pages were composed, and during an interim of depression and disqualification, I heard with a delight and an interest, that I might without hyperbole call medicinal, that the contra-distinction of Understanding from Reason, for which during twenty years I have been contending, _casting my bread upon the waters_ with a perseverance, which in the existing state of the public taste nothing but the deepest conviction of its importance could have inspired--has been lately adopted and sanctioned by the present distinguished Professor of Anatomy, in the Course of Lectures given by him at the Royal College of Surgeons, on the zoological part of Natural History; and, if I am rightly informed, in one of the eloquent and impressive introductory Discourses.[99] In explaining the Nature of Instinct, as deduced from the actions and tendencies of animals successively presented to the observation of the comparative physiologist in the ascending scale of organic life--or rather, I should have said, in an attempt to determine that precise import of the _term_, which is required by the facts[100]--the Professor explained the nature of what I have elsewhere called the _adaptive power_, that is, the faculty of adapting means to proximate ends. [N. B. I mean here a _relative_ end--that which relatively to one thing is an _end_, though relatively to some other it is in itself a _mean_. It is to be regretted, that we have no single word to express those ends, that are not _the_ end: for the distinction between those and an end in the proper sense of the term is an important one.] The Professor, I say, not only explained, first, the nature of the adaptive power _in genere_, and, secondly, the distinct character of the _same_ power as it exists _specifically_ and exclusively in the _human_ being, and acquires the name of Understanding; but he did it in a way which gave the whole sum and substance of my convictions, of all I had so long wished, and so often, but with such imperfect success, attempted to convey, free from all semblance of paradoxy, and from all occasion of offence--_omnem offendiculi_[101] _ansam præcidens_. It is, indeed, for the _fragmentary_ reader only that I have any scruple. In those who have had the patience to accompany me so far on the up-hill road to manly principles, I can have no reason to guard against that disposition to hasty offence from anticipation of _consequences_,--that faithless and loveless spirit of fear which plunged Galileo into a prison[102]--a spirit most unworthy of an educated man, who ought to have learnt that the mistakes of scientific men have never injured Christianity, while every new truth discovered by them has either added to its evidence, or prepared the mind for its reception.

_On Instinct in Connection with the Understanding._

It is evident, that the definition of a Genus or class is an _adequate_ definition only of the lowest _species_ of that Genus: for each higher species is distinguished from the lower by some additional character, while the general definition includes only the characters common to _all_ the species. Consequently it _describes_ the lowest only. Now I distinguish a genus or _kind_ of Powers under the name of Adaptive power, and give as its generic definition--the power of selecting, and adapting means to proximate ends; and as an instance of the lowest _species_ of this genus, I take the stomach of a caterpillar. I ask myself, under what words I can generalize the action of this organ; and I see, that it selects and adapts the appropriate means (that is, the assimilable part of the vegetable _congesta_) to the proximate end, that is, the growth or reproduction of the insect's body. This we call VITAL POWER, or _vita propria_ of the stomach; and this being the _lowest_ species, its definition is the same with the definition of the _kind_.

Well! from the power of the stomach, I pass to the power exerted by the whole animal. I trace it wandering from spot to spot, and plant to plant, till it finds the appropriate vegetable; and again on this chosen vegetable, I mark it seeking out and fixing on the part of the plant, bark, leaf, or petal, suited to its nourishment: or (should the animal have assumed the butterfly form), to the deposition of its eggs, and the sustentation of the future _larva_. Here I see a power of selecting and adapting means to proximate ends _according to circumstances_: and this higher species of Adaptive Power we call INSTINCT.

Lastly, I reflect on the facts narrated and described in the preceding extracts from Hüber, and see a power of selecting and adapting the proper means to the proximate ends, according to _varying_ circumstances. And what shall we call this yet higher species? We name the former, Instinct: we must call this INSTINCTIVE INTELLIGENCE.

Here then we have three Powers of the same kind; Life, Instinct, and instinctive Intelligence: the essential characters that define the genus existing equally in all three. But in addition to these, I find one other character common to the highest and lowest: namely, that the purposes are all manifestly predetermined by the peculiar organization of the animals; and though it may not be possible to discover any such immediate dependency in all the actions, yet the actions being determined by the purposes, the _result_ is equivalent: and both the actions and the purposes are all in a necessitated reference to the preservation and continuance of the particular animal or the progeny. There is selection, but not _choice_: volition rather than will. The possible _knowledge_ of a thing, or the desire to have that _thing_ representable by a distinct correspondent _thought_, does not, in the animal, suffice to render the thing an _object_, or the ground of a purpose. I select and adapt the proper means to the separation of a stone from a rock, which I neither can, or desire to make use of, for food, shelter, or ornament: because, perhaps, I wish to measure the angles of its primary crystals, or, perhaps, for no better reason than the apparent _difficulty_ of loosening the stone--_sit pro ratione voluntas_--and thus make a motive out of the absence of all motive, and a reason out of the arbitrary will to act without any reason.

Now what is the conclusion from these premises? Evidently this: that if I suppose the Adaptive Power in its highest _species_, or form of Instinctive Intelligence, to co-exist with Reason, _Free_ will, and Self-consciousness, it instantly becomes UNDERSTANDING: in other words, that Understanding differs indeed from the noblest form of Instinct, but not in itself or in its own essential properties, but in consequence of its co-existence with far higher Powers of a diverse kind in one and the same subject. INSTINCT in a rational, responsible, and self-conscious Animal, is Understanding.

Such I apprehend to have been the Professor's view and Exposition of Instinct--and in confirmation of its truth, I would merely request my readers, from the numerous well-authenticated instances on record, to recall some one of the extraordinary actions of dogs for the preservation of their masters' lives, and even for the avenging of their deaths. In these instances we have the third _species_ of the Adaptive Power, in connexion with an apparently _moral_ end--with an _end_ in the proper sense of the word. _Here_ the Adaptive Power co-exists with a purpose apparently _voluntary_, and the action seems neither pre-determined by the organization of the animal, nor in any direct reference to his own preservation, or to the continuance of his race. It is united with an imposing semblance of gratitude, fidelity, and disinterested love. We not only _value_ the faithful brute: we attribute _worth_ to him. This, I admit, is a problem, of which I have no solution to offer. One of the wisest of uninspired men has not hesitated to declare the dog a great mystery, on account of this dawning of a _moral_ nature unaccompanied by any the least evidence of _reason_, in whichever of the two senses we interpret the word--whether as the _practical_ reason, that is, the power of proposing an _ultimate_ end, the determinability of the Will by IDEAS; or as the _sciential_ reason, that is, the faculty of concluding universal and necessary truths from particular and contingent appearances. But in a question respecting the possession of reason, the absence of all truth is tantamount to a proof of the contrary. It is, however, by no means equally clear to me, that the dog may not possess an _analogon_ of WORDS, which I have elsewhere shown to be the proper objects of the "faculty, judging according to sense."

But to return to my purpose: I intreat the reader to reflect on any one fact of this kind, whether occurring in his own experience, or selected from the numerous anecdotes of the dog preserved in the writings of zoologists. I will then confidently appeal to him, whether it is in his power not to consider the faculty displayed in these actions as the same _in kind_ with the Understanding, however inferior _in degree_.--Or should he even in these instances prefer calling it _Instinct_, and this in _contra_-distinction from _Understanding_, I call on him to point out the boundary between the two, the chasm or partition-wall that divides or separates the one from the other. If he can, he will have done what none before him have been able to do, though many and eminent men have tried hard for it: and my recantation shall be among the first trophies of his success. If he cannot, I must infer that he is controlled by his dread of the _consequences_, by an apprehension of some injury resulting to Religion or Morality from this opinion; and I shall console myself with the hope, that in the sequel of this work he will find proofs of the directly contrary tendency.--Not only is this view of the Understanding, as differing in _degree_ from Instinct and _in kind_ from Reason, innocent in its possible influences on the religious character, but it is an indispensable preliminary to the removal of the most formidable obstacles to an intelligent Belief of the _peculiar_ doctrines of the Gospel, of the _characteristic_ Articles of the Christian Faith, with which the Advocates of the truth in Christ have to contend;--the evil _heart_ of Unbelief alone excepted.

[98] The philosopher, whom the Inquisition would have burnt alive as an atheist, had not Leo X. and Cardinal Bembo decided that the work might be formidable to those semi-pagan Christians who regarded Revelation as a mere make-weight to their boasted Religion of Nature; but contained nothing dangerous to the Catholic Church or offensive to a true believer. [He was born in 1462, and died in 1525.--H. N. C.]

[99] A discourse by Prof. J. H. Green. This, "On Instinct," was afterwards printed by Prof. Green with his 'Vital Dynamics,' 1840. We give it as so published in the Appendix to the present edition; though, of course, the "report," apparently verbal, on which Coleridge's remarks of 1825 are founded, may have differed somewhat from the Professor's text as published in 1840.--ED.

[100] The word, Instinct, brings together a number of facts into one class by the assertion of a common ground, the nature of which ground it determines _negatively_ only--that is, the word does not explain _what_ this common ground is; but simply indicates that there _is_ such a ground, and that it is different in kind from that in which the responsible and consciously voluntary actions of men originate. Thus, in its true and primary import, Instinct stands in antithesis to Reason; and the perplexity and contradictory statements into which so many meritorious naturalists, and popular writers on natural history (Priscilla Wakefield, Kirby, Spence, Hüber, and even Reimarus) have fallen on this subject, arise wholly from their taking the word in opposition to Understanding. I notice this, because I would not lose any opportunity of impressing on the mind of my youthful readers the important truth that language (as the embodied and articulated Spirit of the Race, as the growth and emanation of a People, and not the work of any individual wit or will) is often inadequate, sometimes deficient, but never false or delusive. We have only to master the true origin and original import of any native and abiding word, to find in it, if not the _solution_ of the facts expressed by it, yet a finger-mark pointing to the road on which this solution is to be sought.

[101] _Neque quiquam addubito, quin ea candidis omnibus faciat satis. Quid autem facias istis qui vel ob ingenii pertinaciam sibi satisfieri nolint, vel stupidiores sint quam ut satisfactionem intelligant? Nam quemadmodum Simonides dixit, Thessalos hebetiores esse quam ut possint a se decipi, ita quosdam videas stupidiores quam ut placari queant. Adhuc non mirum est invenire quod calumnietur qui nihil aliud quærit nisi quod calumnietur._ (Erasmi Epist. ad Dorpium.) At all events, the paragraph passing through the medium of my own prepossessions, if any fault be found with it, the fault probably, and the blame certainly, belongs to the reporter.

[102] And which (I may add) in a more enlightened age, and in a Protestant country, impelled more than one German University to anathematize Fr. Hoffman's discovery of carbonic acid gas, and of its effects on animal life, as hostile to religion, and tending to atheism! Three or four students at the university of Jena, in the attempt to raise a spirit for the discovery of a supposed hidden treasure, were strangled or poisoned by the fumes of the charcoal they had been burning in a close garden-house of a vineyard near Jena, while employed in their magic fumigations and charms. One only was restored to life: and from his account of the noises and spectres (_in_ his ears and eyes) as he was losing his senses, it was taken for granted that _the bad spirit_ had destroyed them. Frederic Hoffman admitted that it was a _very bad_ spirit that had _tempted_ them, the Spirit of Avarice and Folly; and that a very _noxious_ Spirit (gas, or _geist_,) was the immediate cause of their death. But he contended that this latter spirit was the _spirit_ of charcoal, which would have produced the same effect, had the young men been chaunting psalms instead of incantations: and acquitted the devil of all _direct_ concern in the business. The Theological Faculty took the alarm: even physicians pretended to be horror-stricken at Hoffman's audacity. The controversy and its appendages embittered several years of this great and good man's life.

_Reflections Introductory to Aphorism X._

The most _momentous_ question a man can ask is, Have I a Saviour? And yet as far as the individual querist is concerned, it is premature and to no purpose, unless another question has been previously put and answered, (alas! too generally put after the wounded conscience has already given the answer!) namely, Have I any need of a Saviour? For him who _needs_ none, (O bitter irony of the evil Spirit, whose whispers the proud Soul takes for its own thoughts, and knows not how the Tempter is scoffing the while!) there _is_ none, as long as he feels no need. On the other hand, it is scarcely possible to have answered this question in the affirmative, and not ask--first, _in what_ the necessity consists? secondly, _whence_ it proceeded? and, thirdly, how far the answer to this second question is or is not contained in the answer to the first? I intreat the intelligent reader, who has taken me as his temporary guide on the straight, but yet, from the number of cross roads, difficult way of religious Inquiry, to halt a moment, and consider the main points, that, in this last division of my work, have been already offered for his reflection. I have attempted then to fix the proper meaning of the words, Nature and Spirit, the one being the _antithesis_ to the other: so that the most general and _negative_ definition of Nature is, Whatever is not Spirit; and _vice versâ_ of Spirit, That which is not comprehended in Nature: or in the language of our elder divines, that which transcends Nature. But nature is the term in which we comprehend all things that are representable in the forms of time and space, and subjected to the relations of cause and effect: and the cause of the existence of which, therefore, is to be sought for perpetually in something antecedent. The word itself expresses this in the strongest manner possible: _Natura_, that which is _about to be_ born, that which is always _becoming_. It follows, therefore, that whatever originates its own acts, or in any sense contains in itself the cause of its own state, must be _spiritual_, and consequently _super-natural_: yet not on that account necessarily _miraculous_. And such must the responsible WILL in us be, if it be at all.

A prior step had been to remove all misconceptions from the subject; to show the reasonableness of a belief in the reality and real influence of a universal and divine Spirit; the compatibility and possible communion of such a Spirit with the Spiritual principle in individuals; and the analogy offered by the most undeniable truths of Natural Philosophy.[103]

These views of the Spirit, and of the Will as Spiritual, form the ground-work of my scheme. Among the numerous corollaries or appendents, the first that presented itself respects the question, Whether there is any faculty in man by which a knowledge of spiritual truths, or of any truths not abstracted from nature, is rendered possible? and an Answer is attempted in the Comment on Aphorism VIII. And here I beg leave to remark, that in this comment the only novelty, and, if there be merit, the only merit is--that there being two very different Meanings, and two different Words, I have here and in former Works appropriated one meaning to one of the Words, and the other to the other--instead of using the words indifferently and by haphazard: a confusion, the ill effects of which in this instance are so great and of such frequent occurrence in the works of our ablest philosophers and divines, that I should select it before all others in proof of Hobbes's Maxim:--that it is a short, downhill passage from errors in words to errors in things. The difference of the Reason from the Understanding, and the imperfection and limited sphere of the latter, have been asserted by many both before and since Lord Bacon;[104] but still the habit of using Reason and Understanding as synonyms, acted as a disturbing force. Some it led into mysticism, others it set on explaining away a clear difference _in kind_ into a mere superiority in degree: and it partially eclipsed the truth for all.

In close connexion with this, and therefore forming the Comment on the Aphorism next following, is the subject of the legitimate exercise of the Understanding and its limitation to Objects of Sense; with the errors both of unbelief and of misbelief, which result from its extension beyond the sphere of possible Experience. Wherever the forms of reasoning appropriate only to the _natural_ world are applied to _spiritual_ realities, it may be truly said, that the more strictly logical the reasoning is in all its _parts_, the more irrational it is as a _whole_.

To the reader thus armed and prepared, I now venture to present the so called mysteries of Faith, that is, the peculiar tenets and especial constituents of Christianity, or Religion in spirit and in truth. In right order I must have commenced with the Articles of the Trinity and Apostacy, including the question respecting the Origin of Evil, and the Incarnation of the WORD. And could I have followed this order, some difficulties that now press on me would have been obviated.--But (as has already been explained) the limits of the present volume rendered it alike impracticable and inexpedient; for the necessity of my argument would have called forth certain hard though most true sayings, respecting the hollowness and tricksy sophistry of the so called "Natural Theology," "Religion of Nature," "Light of Nature," and the like, which a brief exposition could not save from innocent misconceptions, much less protect against plausible misinterpretation.--And yet both Reason and Experience have convinced me, that in the greater number of our ALOGI, who feed on the husks of Christianity, the disbelief of the Trinity, the Divinity of Christ included, has its origin and support in the assumed self-evidence of this Natural Theology, and in their ignorance of the insurmountable difficulties which (on the same mode of reasoning) press upon the fundamental articles of their own Remnant of a Creed. But arguments, which would prove the falsehood of a known truth, must themselves be false, and can prove the falsehood of no other position in _eodem genere_.

This _hint_ I have thrown out as a _spark_ that may perhaps fall where it will kindle. And worthily might the wisest of men make inquisition into the three momentous points here spoken of, for the purposes of speculative insight, and for the formation of enlarged and systematic views of the destination of man, and the dispensation of God. But the _practical_ Inquirer (I speak not of those who inquire for the gratification of curiosity, and still less of those who labour as students only to shine as disputants; but of one, who seeks the truth, because he feels the want of it,) the practical Inquirer, I say, hath already placed his foot on the rock, if he have satisfied himself that whoever needs not a Redeemer is more than human. Remove for him the difficulties and objections, that oppose or perplex his belief of a crucified Saviour; convince him of the reality of sin, which is impossible without a knowledge of its true nature and inevitable consequences; and then satisfy him as to the _fact_ historically, and as to the truth spiritually, of a redemption therefrom by Christ; do this for him, and there is little fear that he will permit either logical quirks or metaphysical puzzles to contravene the plain dictate of his common sense, that the Sinless One that redeemed mankind from sin, must have been more than man; and that He who brought Light and Immortality into the world, could not in his own nature have been an inheritor of Death and Darkness. It is morally impossible that a man with these convictions should suffer the objection of Incomprehensibility (and this on a subject of _Faith_) to overbalance the manifest absurdity and contradiction in the notion of a mediator between God and the human race, at the same infinite distance from God as the race for whom he mediates.

The origin of evil, meanwhile, is a question interesting only to the metaphysician, and in a system of moral and religious philosophy. The man of sober mind, who seeks for truths that possess a moral and practical interest, is content to be _certain_, first, that evil must have had a beginning, since otherwise it must either be God, or a co-eternal and co-equal rival of God; both impious notions, and the latter foolish to boot:--secondly, that it could not originate in God; for if so, it would be at once evil and not evil, or God would be at once God (that is, infinite Goodness) and not God--both alike impossible positions. Instead therefore of troubling himself with this barren controversy, he more profitably turns his inquiries to _that_ evil which most concerns himself, and of which he _may_ find the origin.

The entire Scheme of _necessary_ Faith may be reduced to two heads;--first, the object and occasion, and, secondly, the fact and effect,--of our redemption by Christ: and to this view does the order of the following Comments correspond. I have begun with ORIGINAL SIN, and proceeded in the following Aphorism to the doctrine of Redemption. The Comments on the remaining Aphorisms are all subsidiary to these, or written in the hope of making the minor tenets of general belief be believed in a spirit worthy of these. They are, in short, intended to supply a febrifuge against aguish scruples and horrors, the hectic of the soul;--and "for servile and thrall-like fear to substitute that adoptive and cheerful boldness, which our new alliance with God requires of us as Christians." (_Milton._) NOT the Origin of Evil, NOT the _Chronology_ of Sin, or the chronicles of the original Sinner; but Sin originant, underived from without, and no passive link in the adamantine chain of Effects, each of which is in its turn an _instrument_ of Causation, but no one of them a Cause;--NOT with Sin _inflicted_, which would be a Calamity;--NOT with Sin (that is, an evil tendency) _implanted_, for which let the planter be responsible; but I begin with _Original_ Sin. And for this purpose I have selected the Aphorism from the ablest and most formidable antagonist of this doctrine, Bishop JEREMY TAYLOR, and from the most eloquent work of this most eloquent of divines.[106] Had I said, of men, Cicero would forgive me, and Demosthenes nod assent![107]

APHORISM X.

_On Original Sin._

JEREMY TAYLOR.

Is there any such thing? That is not the question. For it is a fact acknowledged on all hands almost: and even those who will not confess it in words, confess it in their complaints. For my