In the first mode, you begin with a definition, and that definition is
necessarily assumed as the truth. As the argument proceeds, the conclusion
from the first proposition becomes the base of the second, and so on. Now,
it is quite impossible that you can be sure that you have included all the
necessary, and none but the necessary, terms in your definition; as,
therefore, you proceed, the original speck of error is multiplied at every
remove; the same infirmity of knowledge besetting each successive
definition. Hence you may set out, like Spinosa, with all but the truth,
and end with a conclusion which is altogether monstrous; and yet the mere
deduction shall be irrefragable. Warburton's "Divine Legation" is also a
splendid instance of this mode of discussion, and of its inability to lead
to the truth: in fact, it is an attempt to adopt the mathematical series of
proof, in forgetfulness that the mathematician is sure of the truth of his
definition at each remove, because he _creates _it, as he can do, in pure
figure and number. But you cannot _make _any thing true which results from,
or is connected with, real externals; you can only _find _it out. The chief
use of this first mode of discussion is to sharpen the wit, for which
purpose it is the best exercitation.
2. The historical mode is a very common one: in it the author professes to
find out the truth by collecting the facts of the case, and tracing them
downwards; but this mode is worse than the other. Suppose the question is
as to the true essence and character of the English constitution. First,
where will you begin your collection of facts? where will you end it? What
facts will you select, and how do you know that the class of facts which
you select are necessary terms in the premisses, and that other classes of
facts, which you neglect, are not necessary? And how do you distinguish
phenomena which proceed from disease or accident from those which are the
genuine fruits of the essence of the constitution? What can be more
striking, in illustration of the utter inadequacy of this line of
investigation for arriving at the real truth, than the political treatises
and constitutional histories which we have in every library? A Whig proves
his case convincingly to the reader who knows nothing beyond his author;
then comes an old Tory (Carte, for instance), and ferrets up a hamperful of
conflicting documents and notices, which proves _his _case _per contra_. A.
takes this class of facts; B. takes that class: each proves something true,
neither proves _the_ truth, or any thing like _the _truth; that is, the
whole truth.
3. You must, therefore, commence with the philosophic idea of the thing,
the true nature of which you wish to find out and manifest. You must carry
your rule ready made, if you wish to measure aright. If you ask me how I
can know that this idea--my own invention--is the truth, by which the
phenomena of history are to be explained, I answer, in the same way exactly
that you know that your eyes were made to see with; and that is, because
you _do _see with them. If I propose to you an idea or self-realizing
theory of the constitution, which shall manifest itself as in existence
from the earliest times to the present,--which shall comprehend within it
_all _the facts which history has preserved, and shall give them a meaning
as interchangeably causals or effects;--if I show you that such an event or
reign was an obliquity to the right hand, and how produced, and such other
event or reign a deviation to the left, and whence originating,--that the
growth was stopped here, accelerated there,--that such a tendency is, and
always has been, corroborative, and such other tendency destructive, of the
main progress of the idea towards realization;--if this idea, not only like
a kaleidoscope, shall reduce all the miscellaneous fragments into order,
but shall also minister strength, and knowledge, and light to the true
patriot and statesmen for working out the bright thought, and bringing the
glorious embryo to a perfect birth;--then, I think, I have a right to say
that the idea which led to this is not only true, but the truth, the only
truth. To set up for a statesman upon historical knowledge only, is as
about as wise as to set up for a musician by the purchase of some score
flutes, fiddles, and horns. In order to make music, you must know how to
play; in order to make your facts speak truth, you must know what the truth
is which _ought_ to be proved,--the ideal truth,--the truth which was
consciously or unconsciously, strongly or weakly, wisely or blindly,
intended at all times.[1]
[Footnote 1:
I have preserved this passage, conscious, the while, how liable it is to be
misunderstood, or at least not understood. The readers of Mr. Coleridge's
works generally, or of his "Church and State" in particular, will have no
difficulty in entering into his meaning; namely, that no investigation in
the non-mathematical sciences can be carried on in a way deserving to be
called philosophical, unless the investigator have in himself a mental
initiative, or, what comes to the same thing, unless he set out with an
intuition of the ultimate aim or idea of the science or aggregation of
facts to be explained or interpreted. The analysis of the Platonic and
Baconian methods in "The Friend," to which I have before referred, and the
"Church and State," exhibit respectively a splendid vindication and example
of Mr. Coleridge's mode of reasoning on this subject.--ED.]
_April _18. 1833.