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]