There is a remarkable discrepancy in the statements of Coleridge respecting
reason and understanding.
(1.) _Friend_, vol. i. pp. 207-8. (Pickering.)--
"That many animals possess a share of understanding perfectly
distinguishable from mere instinct we all allow. Few persons have a
favourite dog, without making instances of its intelligence an
occasional topic of conversation. They call for our admiration of the
individual animal, and not with exclusive reference to the wisdom in
nature, as in the case of [Greek: storgê], or maternal instinct: or of
the hexangular cells of the bees.... We hear little or nothing of the
instincts of the 'half-reasoning elephant,' and as little of the
understanding of caterpillars and butterflies."
_Aids to Reflection_, vol. i. pp 171-3. (Pickering.) Here, after quoting
two instances from Hüber about bees and ants, he says,--
"Now I assert that the faculty in the acts here narrated does not
differ _in kind_ from understanding."
Does Coleridge mean to tell us that bees and ants have the same faculty
(understanding) as dogs and elephants?
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(2.) _Friend_, vol. i. pp. 216-7.--
"For a moment's steady self-reflection will show us that, in the simple
determination 'black is not white,' or 'that two straight lines cannot
include a space,' all the powers are implied that distinguish man from
animals; first, the power of reflection; second, of comparison; third,
and therefore suspension of the mind; fourth, therefore of a
controlling will, and the power of acting from notions, instead of mere
images exciting appetites; from motives, and not from mere dark
instinct."
And after relating a story about a dog who appeared to have employed the
disjunctive syllogism (in relation to which see Cottle's _Reminiscences_,
vol. i. pp. 48-9.), Coleridge remarks,--
"So awful and almost miraculous does the simple act of concluding 'take
three from four, and there remains one,' appear to us, when attributed
to one of the most sagacious of all brute animals."
_Aids to Reflection_, vol. i. p. 175.--
"Understanding is the faculty of reflection, reason of contemplation."
And p. 176.--"The understanding, then, considered exclusively as an
organ of human intelligence, is the faculty by which we reflect and
generalise.... The whole process [of the understanding] may be reduced
to three acts, all depending on, and supposing a previous impression
on, the senses: first, the appropriation of our attention; second (and
in order to the continuance of the first), abstraction, or the
voluntary withholding of the attention; and, third, generalisation; and
these are the proper functions of the understanding."
_Aids to Reflection_, vol. i. p. 182. _note_.--
"So far, and no further, could the understanding carry us; and so far
as this, 'the faculty judging according to sense' conducts many of the
inferior animals, if not in the same, yet in instances analogous and
fully equivalent."
Does Coleridge, then, mean us to understand him as saying, that many of the
brutes can reflect, abstract, and generalise?
(3.) _Friend_, vol. i. p. 259.--
"Reason! best and holiest gift of God, and bond of union with the
Giver; the high title by which the majesty of man claims precedence
above all other living creatures--mysterious faculty, the mother of
conscience, of language...."
_Aids to Reflection_, vol. i. pp. 176-182.--Coleridge here gives his
reasons for considering language a property of the understanding; and, in
p. 195., adds,--
"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.'"
Does Coleridge mean that the inferior animals may have language?
Who, of your many able correspondents, will assist me in unravelling this
complicated tissue?