Jeremy Taylor is an excellent author for a young man to study, for the
purpose of imbibing noble principles, and at the same time of learning to
exercise caution and thought in detecting his numerous errors.
* * * * *
I must acknowledge, with some hesitation, that I think Hooker has been a
little over-credited for his judgment.
Take as an instance of an idea the continuity and coincident distinctness
of nature; or this,--vegetable life is always striving to be something that
it is not; animal life to be itself.[1] Hence, in a plant the parts, as the
root, the stem, the branches, leaves, &c. remain after they have each
produced or contributed to produce a different _status_ of the whole plant:
in an animal nothing of the previous states remains distinct, but is
incorporated into, and constitutes progressively, the very self.
[Footnote 1:
The reader who has never studied Plato, Bacon, Kant, or Coleridge in their
philosophic works, will need to be told that the word Idea is not used in
this passage in the sense adopted by "Dr. Holofernes, who in a lecture on
metaphysics, delivered at one of the Mechanics' Institutions, explodes all
_ideas_ but those of sensation; whilst his friend, deputy Costard, has no
_idea_ of a better-flavoured haunch of venison, than he dined off at the
London Tavern last week. He admits (for the deputy has travelled) that the
French have an excellent _idea_ of cooking in general; but holds that their
most accomplished _maîtres de cuisine_ have no more _idea_ of dressing a
turtle, than the Parisian gourmands themselves have any _real idea_ of the
true _taste_ and _colour_ of the fat." Church and State, p. 78. No! what
Mr. Coleridge meant by an idea in this place may be expressed in various
ways out of his own works. I subjoin a sufficient definition from the
Church and State, p. 6. "That which, contemplated _objectively_, (that is,
as existing _externally_ to the mind,) we call a law; the same contemplated
_subjectively_, (that is, as existing in a subject or mind,) is an idea.
Hence Plato often names Ideas, Laws; and Lord Bacon, the British Plato,
describes the laws of the material universe as the ideas in nature. "Quod
in natura _naturata_ Lex, in natura _naturante_ Idea dicitur." A more
subtle limitation of the word may be found in the last paragraph of Essay
(E) in the Appendix to the Statesman's Manual.--ED.]
* * * * *
To know any thing for certain is to have a clear insight into the
inseparability of the predicate from the subject (the matter from the
form), and _vice versâ_. This is a verbal definition,--a _real_ definition
of a thing absolutely known is impossible. I _know_ a circle, when I
perceive that the equality of all possible radii from the centre to the
circumference is inseparable from the idea of a circle.
_August_ 30. 1827.