consciousness, and if consciousness be one in the whole human race,
whence arises the prodigious diversity which seems to exist between
man and man, and in what does this diversity consist? In truth,
when we perceive at first view so many apparent differences between
one individual and another, one country and another, one epoch of
humanity and another, we feel a profound emotion of melancholy, and
are tempted to regard an intellectual development so capricious,
and even the whole of humanity, as a phenomenon without
consistency, without grandeur, and without interest. But it is
demonstrated by a more attentive observation of facts, that no man
is a stranger to either of the three great ideas which constitute
consciousness, namely, personality or the liberty of man,
impersonality or the necessity of nature, and the providence of
God. Every man comprehends these three ideas immediately, because
he found them at first and constantly finds them again within
himself. The exceptions to this fact, by their small number, by the
absurdities which they involve, by the difficulties which they
create, serve only to exhibit, in a still clearer light, the
universality of faith in the human race, the treasure of good sense
deposited in truth, and the peace and happiness that there are for
a human soul in not discarding the convictions of its kind. Leave
out the exceptions which appear from time to time in certain
critical periods of history, and you will perceive that the masses
which alone have true existence, always and everywhere live in the
same faith, of which the forms only vary."
These somewhat too copious extracts have been purposely taken from the
first volume of the "Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature," edited
by George Ripley in 1838, rather than from the collected writings of
Cousin, because they show what a leading New England transcendentalist
thought most important in the teaching of the French school. His own
estimate of the philosophy and his expectations from it may be learned
from the closing passages of the introduction to that volume:
"The objects at which Mr. Coleridge aims, it seems to me, are in a
great measure accomplished by the philosophy of Cousin. This
philosophy demolishes, by one of the most beautiful specimens of
scientific analysis that is anywhere to be met with, the system of
sensation, against which Mr. Coleridge utters such eloquent and
pathetic denunciations. It establishes on a rock the truth of the
everlasting sentiments of the human heart. It exhibits to the
speculative inquirer, in the rigorous forms of science, the reality
of our instinctive faith in God, in virtue, in the human soul, in
the beauty of holiness, and in the immortality of man.
"Such a philosophy, I cannot but believe, will ultimately find a
cherished abode in the youthful affections of this nation, in whose
history, from the beginning, the love of freedom, the love of
philosophical inquiry, and the love of religion have been combined
in a thrice holy bond. We need a philosophy like this to purify and
enlighten our politics, to consecrate our industry, to cheer and
elevate society. We need it for our own use in the hours of mental
misgiving and gloom; when the mystery of the universe presses
heavily upon our souls; when the fountains of the great deep are
broken up, and the
"Intellectual power
Goes sounding on, a dim and perilous way,"
over the troubled waters of the stormy sea. We need it for the use
of our practical men, who, surrounded on every side with the
objects of sense, engrossed with the competitions of business, the
rivalries of public life, or the cares of professional duty, and
accustomed to look at the immediate and obvious utility of
everything which appeals to their notice, often acquire a distaste
for all moral and religious inquiries, and as an almost inevitable
consequence, lose their interest, and often their belief, in the
moral and religious faculties of their nature. We need it for the
use of our young men, who are engaged in the active pursuits of
life, or devoted to the cultivation of literature. How many on the
very threshold of manly responsibility, by the influence of a few
unhappy mistakes, which an acquaintance with their higher nature,
as unfolded by a sound religious philosophy, would have prevented,
have consigned themselves to disgrace, remorse, and all the evils
of a violated conscience! How many have become the dupes of the
sophists' eloquence, or the victims of the fanatics' terrors, for
whom the spirit of a true philosophy--a philosophy 'baptized in the
pure fountain of eternal love,' would have preserved the charm and
beauty of life."
Cousin's "History of Philosophy," translated by H. G. Linberg, was
published in 1832. The "Elements of Psychology," by C. S. Henry,
appeared in 1834. Thus Cousin was early introduced and recommended, and
his expositions of the German schools were received. The volume from
which passages have been cited had an important influence on New England
thought.
V.
TRANSCENDENTALISM IN ENGLAND.
The prophet of the new philosophy in England was Samuel Taylor
Coleridge; in the early part of the present century, perhaps the most
conspicuous figure in our literary world; the object of more admiration,
the centre of more sympathy, the source of more intellectual life than
any individual of his time; the criticism, the censure, the manifold
animadversion he was made the mark for, better attest his power than the
ovations he received from his worshippers. The believers in his genius
lacked words to express their sense of his greatness. He was the
"eternal youth," the "divine child." The brilliant men of his period
acknowledged his surpassing brilliancy; the deep men confessed his
depth; the spiritual men went to him for inspiration. His mind, affluent
and profuse, contained within no barriers of conventional form, poured
an abounding flood of thoughts over the whole literary domain. He was
essayist, journalist, politician, poet, dramatist, metaphysician,
philosopher, theologian, divine, critic, expositor, dreamer,
soliloquizer; in all eloquent, in all intense. The effect he produced on
the minds of his contemporaries will scarcely be believed now. At
present he is little more than a name: his books are pronounced
unreadable; his opinions are not quoted as authority; his force is
spent. But in 1851, Thomas Carlyle, then past the years of his
enthusiasm, and verging on the scornful epoch of his intellectual
career, spoke of him, in the "Life of Sterling," as "A sublime man, who,
alone in those dark days, had saved his crown of spiritual manhood;
escaping from the black materialisms and revolutionary deluges, with
God, freedom, immortality still his; a king of men. The practical
intellects of the world did not much heed him, or carelessly reckoned
him a metaphysical dreamer; but to the rising spirits of the young
generation he had this dusky, sublime character, and sat there as a kind
of _Magus_, girt in mystery and enigma, his Dodona oak grove (Mr.
Gillman's house at Highgate) whispering strange things, uncertain
whether oracles or jargon." "To the man himself, Nature had given in
high measure the seeds of a noble endowment, and to unfold it was
forbidden him. A subtle, lynx-eyed intellect, tremulous, pious
sensibility to all good and all beautiful; truly a ray of empyrean
light,--but imbedded in such weak laxity of character, in such
indolences and esuriences, as made strange work with it. Once more, the
tragic story of a high endowment with an insufficient will."
The abatement is painfully just; but while Coleridge lived, this very
indolence and moral imbecility added to the interest he excited, and
gave a mystic splendor as of a divine inspiration to his mental
performances. The distinction between unhealthiness and inspiration has
never been clearly marked, and the voluble utterances of the feebly
outlined and loosely jointed soul easily passed for oracles. Thus his
moral deficiencies aided his influence. His wonderful powers of
conversation or rather of effusion in the midst of admiring friends
helped the illusion and the fascination. He really seemed inspired while
he talked; and as his talk ranged through every domain, the listeners
carried away and communicated the impression of a superhuman wisdom.
The impression that Coleridge made on minds of a very different order
from Carlyle's, is given in the following lines by Aubrey de Vere:
"No loftier, purer soul than his hath ever
With awe revolved the planetary page
From infancy to age,
Of knowledge, sedulous and proud to give her
The whole of his great heart, for her own sake;
For what she is: not what she does, or what can make.
And mighty voices from afar came to him;
Converse of trumpets held by cloudy forms
And speech of choral storms.
Spirits of night and noontide bent to woo him;
He stood the while lonely and desolate
As Adam when he ruled a world, yet found no mate.
His loftiest thoughts were but as palms uplifted;
Aspiring, yet in supplicating guise--
His sweetest songs were sighs.
Adown Lethean streams his spirit drifted,
Under Elysian shades from poppied bank,
With amaranths massed in dark luxuriance dank.
Coleridge, farewell! That great and grave transition
Which may not king or priest or conqueror spare.
And yet a babe can bear,
Has come to thee. Through life a goodly vision
Was thine; and time it was thy rest to take.
Soft be the sound ordained thy sleep to break;
When thou art waking, wake me, for thy Master's sake."
In May, 1796,--he was then twenty-four years old,--Coleridge wrote to a
friend, "I am studying German, and in about six weeks shall be able to
read that language with tolerable fluency. Now I have some thoughts of
making a proposal to Robinson, the great London bookseller, of
translating all the works of Schiller, which would make a portly quarto,
on condition that he should pay my journey and my wife's to and from
Jena, a cheap German University where Schiller resides, and allow me two
guineas each quarto sheet, which would maintain me. If I could realize
this scheme, I should there study chemistry and anatomy, and bring over
with me all the works of Semler and Michaelis, the German theologians,
and of Kant, the great German metaphysician." In September, 1798, in
company with Wordsworth and his sister, and at the expense of his
munificent friends Josiah and Thomas Wedgewood, he went to Germany and
spent fourteen months in hard study. There he attended the lectures of
Eichhorn and Blumenbach, made the acquaintance of Tieck, dipped quite
deeply into philosophy and general literature, and took by contagion the
speculative ideas that filled his imagination with visions of
intellectual discovery. Schelling's "Transcendental Idealism," with
which Coleridge was afterwards most in sympathy, was not published till
1800. The "Philosophy of Nature" was published in 1797, the year before
Coleridge's visit. In 1817, he tells the readers of the "Biographia
Literaria" that he had been able to procure only two of Schelling's
books--the first volume of his "Philosophical Writings," and the "System
of Transcendental Idealism;" these and "a small pamphlet against Fichte,
the spirit of which was, to my feelings, painfully incongruous with the
principles, and which displayed the love of wisdom rather than the
wisdom of love."
The philosophical ideas of Schelling commended themselves at once to
Coleridge, who was a born idealist, of audacious genius, speculative,
imaginative, original, capable of any such abstract achievement as the
German undertook.
"In Schelling's _Natur Philosophie_ and the _System des
Transcendentalen Idealismus_, I first found a genial coincidence
with much that I had toiled out for myself, and a powerful
assistance in what I had yet to do. All the main and fundamental
ideas were born and matured in my mind before I had ever seen a
single page of the German philosopher; and I might indeed affirm
with truth, before the more important works of Schelling had been
written, or at least made public. Nor is this at all to be wondered
at. We had studied in the same school; been disciplined by the same
preparatory philosophy, namely, the writings of Kant; we had both
equal obligations to the polar logic and dynamic philosophy of
Giordano Bruno; and Schelling has lately, and, as of recent
acquisition, avowed that same affectionate reverence for the labors
of Behmen and other mystics which I had formed at a much earlier
period. God forbid that I should be suspected of a wish to enter
into a rivalry with Schelling for the honors so unequivocally his
right, not only as a great original genius, but as the _founder_ of
the Philosophy of Nature, and as the most successful _improver_ of
the Dynamic system, which, begun by Bruno, was reintroduced (in a
more philosophical form, and freed from all its impurities and
visionary accompaniments) by Kant, in whom it was the native and
necessary growth of his own system. Kant's followers, however, on
whom (for the greater part) their master's _cloak_ had fallen,
without, or with a very scanty portion of his _spirit_, had adopted
his dynamic ideas, only as a more refined species of mechanics.
With exception of one or two fundamental ideas which cannot be
withheld from Fichte, to Schelling we owe the completion and the
most important victories of this revolution in philosophy. To me it
will be happiness and honor enough, should I succeed in rendering
the system itself intelligible to my countrymen, and in the
application of it to the most awful of subjects for the most
important of purposes. Whether a work is the offspring of a man's
own spirit and the product of original thinking, will be discovered
by those who are its sole legitimate judges, by better tests than
the mere reference to dates."
The question of Coleridge's alleged plagiarism from Schelling does not
concern us here. Whether the philosophy he taught was the product of his
own thinking, or whether he was merely the medium for communicating the
system of Schelling to his countrymen, is of no moment to us. For us it
is sufficient to know that the English-speaking people on both shores of
the Atlantic received them chiefly through the Englishman. Those who are
interested in the other matter will find Coleridge's reputation
vindicated in a long and elaborate introduction to the "Biographia
Literaria," edition of 1847, by the poet's son.
Coleridge was a pure Transcendentalist, of the Schelling school. The
transcendental phrases came over and over in book and conversation,
"reason" and "understanding," "intuition," "necessary truths,"
"consciousness," and the rest that were used to describe the
supersensual world and the faculties by which it was made visible. He
shall speak for himself. The following passage from the "Biographia
Literaria," Chapter XII., will be sufficiently intelligible to those who
have read the previous chapters, or enough of them to comprehend their
cardinal ideas:
"The criterion is this: if a man receives as fundamental facts, and
therefore of course indemonstratable and incapable of further
analysis, the general notions of matter, spirit, soul, body,
action, passiveness, time, space, cause and effect, consciousness,
perception, memory and all these, and is satisfied if only he can
analyze all other notions into some one or more of these supposed
elements, with plausible subordination and apt arrangement; to such
a mind I would as courteously as possible convey the hint, that for
him this chapter was not written.... For philosophy, in its highest
sense, as the science of ultimate truths, and therefore _scientia
scientiarum_, this mere analysis of terms is preparative only,
though as a preparative discipline indispensable.
"Still less dare a favorable perusal be anticipated from the
proselytes of that compendious philosophy which, talking of mind,
but thinking of brick and mortar, or other images equally
abstracted from body, contrives a theory of spirit by nicknaming
matter, and in a few hours can qualify its dullest disciples to
explain the _omne scibile_ by reducing all things to impressions,
ideas, and sensations.
"But it is time to tell the truth; though it requires some courage
to avow it in an age and country in which disquisitions on all
subjects not privileged to adopt technical terms or scientific
symbols, must be addressed to the public. I say, then, that it is
neither possible nor necessary for all men, nor for many, to be
philosophers. There is a philosophic consciousness which lies
beneath or (as it were) behind the spontaneous consciousness
natural to all reflecting beings. As the elder Romans distinguished
their northern provinces into Cis-Alpine and Trans-Alpine, so may
we divide all the objects of human knowledge into those on this
side and those on the other side of the spontaneous consciousness.
The latter is exclusively the domain of pure philosophy, which is
therefore properly entitled _transcendental_, in order to
discriminate it at once, both from mere reflection and
_re_-presentation on the one hand, and on the other from those
flights of lawless speculation which, abandoned by _all_ distinct
consciousness, because transgressing the bounds and purposes of our
intellectual faculties, are justly condemned as _transcendent_.
"The first range of hills that encircles the scanty vale of human
life is the horizon for the majority of its inhabitants. On its
ridges the sun is born and departs. From them the stars rise, and
touching them they vanish. By the many, even this range, the
natural limit and bulwark of the vale, is but imperfectly known.
Its higher ascents are too often hidden in mists and clouds from
uncultivated swamps which few have courage or curiosity to
penetrate. To the multitude below these vapors appear, now as the
dark haunts of terrific agents, on which none may intrude with
impunity; and now all aglow, with colors not their own, they are
gazed at as the splendid palaces of happiness and power. But in all
ages there have been a few who, measuring and sounding the rivers
of the vale at the feet of their farthest inaccessible falls, have
learned that the sources must be far higher and far inward; a few
who, even in the level streams, have detected elements which
neither the vale itself nor the surrounding mountains contained or
could supply. How and whence to these thoughts, these strong
probabilities, the ascertaining vision, the intuitive knowledge may
finally supervene, can be learned only by the fact. I might oppose
to the question the words with which Plotinus supposes Nature to
answer a similar difficulty: 'Should any one interrogate her how
she works, if graciously she vouchsafe to listen and speak, she
will reply, it behooves thee not to disquiet me with
interrogatories, but to understand in silence, even as I am silent,
and work without words.'
"They and they only can acquire the philosophic imagination, the
sacred power of self-intuition, who within themselves can interpret
and understand the symbol, that the wings of the air-sylph are
forming within the skin of the caterpillar; those only, who feel in
their own spirits the same instinct which impels the chrysalis of
the horned fly to leave room in its _involucrum_ for _antennae_ yet
to come. They know and feel that the potential works in them, even
as the actual works in them! In short, all the organs of sense are
framed for a corresponding world of sense; and we have it. All the
organs of spirit are framed for a correspondent world of spirit;
though the latter organs are not developed in all alike. But they
exist in all, and their first appearance discloses itself in the
moral being. How else could it be that even worldlings, not wholly
debased, will contemplate the man of simple and disinterested
goodness with contradictory feelings of pity and respect. 'Poor
man, he is not made for this world.' Oh, herein they utter a
prophecy of universal fulfilment, for man must either rise or sink.
"It is the essential mark of the true philosopher to rest satisfied
with no imperfect light, as long as the impossibility of attaining
a fuller knowledge has not been demonstrated. That the common
consciousness itself will furnish proofs by its own direction that
it is connected with master currents below the surface, I shall
merely assume as a postulate _pro tempore_.... On the IMMEDIATE
which dwells in every man, and on the original intuition or
absolute affirmation of it (which is likewise in every man, but
does not in every man rise into consciousness), all the _certainty_
of our knowledge depends; and this becomes intelligible to no man
by the ministry of mere words from without. The medium by which
spirits understand each other is not the surrounding air, but the
_freedom_ which they possess in common, as the common ethereal
element of their being, the tremulous reciprocations of which
propagate themselves even to the inmost of the soul. Where the
spirit of a man is not _filled_ with the consciousness of freedom
(were it only from its restlessness, as of one struggling in
bondage) all spiritual intercourse is interrupted, not only with
others, but even with himself. No wonder, then, that he remains
incomprehensible to himself as well as to others. No wonder that in
the fearful desert of his consciousness he wearies himself out with
empty words to which no friendly echo answers, either from his own
heart or the heart of a fellow-being; or bewilders himself in the
pursuit of _notional_ phantoms, the mere refractions from unseen
and distant truths through the distorting medium of his own
unenlivened and stagnant understanding! To remain unintelligible to
such a mind, exclaims Schelling on a like occasion, is honor and a
good name before God and man.
"Philosophy is employed on objects of the _inner sense_, and
cannot, like geometry, appropriate to every construction a
corresponding _outward_ intuition.... Now the inner sense has its
direction determined for the greater part only by an act of
freedom. One man's consciousness extends only to the pleasant or
unpleasant sensations caused in him by external impressions;
another enlarges his inner sense to a consciousness of forms and
quantity; a third, in addition to the image, is conscious of the
conception or notion of the thing; a fourth attains to a notion of
his notions--he reflects on his own reflections; and thus we may
say without impropriety, that the one possesses more or less inner
sense than the other....
"The postulate of philosophy, and at the same time the test of
philosophical capacity, is no other than the heaven-descended KNOW
THYSELF. And this at once practically and speculatively. For as
philosophy is neither a science of the reason or understanding
only, nor merely a science of morals, but the science of BEING
altogether, its primary ground can be neither merely speculative
nor merely practical, but both in one. All knowledge rests upon the
coincidence of an object with a subject. For we can _know_ only
that which is true; and the truth is universally placed in the
coincidence of the thought with the thing, of the representation
with the object represented."
Coleridge then puts and argues the two alternatives. 1. Either the
Objective is taken as primary, and then we have to account for the
supervention of the Subjective which coalesces with it, which natural
philosophy supposes. 2. Or the Subjective is taken as primary, and then
we have to account for the supervention of the objective, which
spiritual philosophy supposes. The Transcendentalist accepts the latter
alternative.
"The second position, which not only claims but necessitates the
admission of its immediate certainty, equally for the scientific
reason of the philosopher as for the common-sense of mankind at
large, namely, I AM, cannot properly be entitled a prejudice. It is
groundless indeed; but then in the very idea it precludes all
ground, and, separated from the immediate consciousness, loses its
whole sense and import. It is groundless; but only because it is
itself the ground of all other certainty. Now the apparent
contradiction, that the first position--namely, that the existence
of things without us, which from its nature cannot be immediately
certain--should be received as blindly and as independently of all
grounds as the existence of our own being, the transcendental
philosopher can solve only by the supposition that the former is
unconsciously involved in the latter; that it is not only coherent,
but identical, and one and the same thing with our own immediate
self-consciousness. To demonstrate this identity is the office and
object of his philosophy.