The habit of this celebrated author, to annotate in the margins of books
which he was reading, must be well known to many of the subscribers of "N.
& Q."
I have in my possession a curious little volume of notes, &c. in Mr.
Coleridge's handwriting, of course very highly prized, from which extracts
were made in vol. i. pp. 274-5., &c. of Coleridge's _Literary Remains_,
collected and edited by his nephew, H. N. Coleridge, Esq., 4 vols., 1836:
Pickering.
But, in addition to this volume, I have a few with S. T. Coleridge's
pencillings in the margins. The following is selected from Dr. Parr's
celebrated _Spital Sermon_, and is appended to one of his (Dr. Parr's)
notes, wherein he says:
"Upon the various effects of superstition, where it has spread widely
and thriven long, we can reason from facts. But in the original frame
of the human mind, and in the operation of all those usual causes which
regulate our conduct or affect our happiness, there seems to be a most
active, constant, and invincible principle of _resistance_ to the
approachments of atheism. 'All nature cries aloud' against them,
'through all her works,' not in speculation only, but in practice."
Mr. Coleridge's annotation upon the foregoing opinion of the learned Doctor
is as follows; and I select it as a specimen of Coleridge's astonishing
recollection of any opinions he had formerly promulgated, which might have
called any laxity of principle, religious, moral, or political, into doubt,
and of his extreme anxiety to refute or explain them:
"I never had even a doubt in _my being_ concerning the supreme Mind;
but understand too sufficiently the difficulty of any intellectual
demonstrations of his existence, and see too plainly how inevitably the
principles of many pious men (Locke, Priestley, Hartley, even
Archbishop King) would lead to atheism by fair production of
consequences, not to feel in perfect charity with all good men, atheist
or theist; and, let me add, though I now seem to feel firm ground of
_reason_ under my belief in God, not gratefully to attribute my uniform
past _theism_ more to general feeling than to depth of understanding.
Within this purpose I hope that, without offence, I may declare my
conviction, that in the French Revolution atheism was an effect, not a
cause; that the same wicked men, under other circumstances and
fashions, would have done the same things as Anabaptists within
Munster, or as Inquisitors among the South American Indians; and that
atheism from conviction, and as a ruling motive and impulse (in which
case only can it be fairly compared with superstition), is a quiescent
state and _per se_ harmless to all but the atheist himself. Rather is
it that overwhelming preference of experimental philosophy, which, by
smothering over more delicate perceptions, and debilitating often to
impotence the faculty of going into ourselves, leads to atheism as a
conscious creed, and in its extreme is atheism in its essence. This
rather is, I should deem, the more perilous, and a plainer and better
object for philosophical attack. O! bring back _Jack the Giant Killer_
and the _Arabian Nights_ to our children, and Plato and his followers
to new men, and let us have chemistry as we have watchmakers or
surgeons (I select purposely honourable and useful callings), as a
_division_ of human labour, as worthy profession for a few, not as a
glittering master-feature of the education of men, women, and
children.--S. T. C."