Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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Nothing ever left a stain on that gentle creature's mind, which looked upon the degraded men and things around him like moonshine on a dunghill, which shines and takes no pollution. All things are shadows to him, except those which move his affections.

September 23. 1830

LOGIC

There are two kinds of logic: 1. Syllogistic. 2. Criterional. How any one can by any spinning make out more than ten or a dozen pages about the first, is inconceivable to me; all those absurd forms of syllogisms are one half pure sophisms, and the other half mere forms of rhetoric.

All syllogistic logic is—1. _Se_clusion; 2. _In_clusion; 3. _Con_clusion; which answer to the understanding, the experience, and the reason. The first says, this ought to be; the second adds, this is; and the last pronounces, this must be so. The criterional logic, or logic of premisses, is, of course, much the most important; and it has never yet been treated.

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The object of rhetoric is persuasion,—of logic, conviction,—of grammar, significancy. A fourth term is wanting, the rhematic, or logic of sentences.

September 24. 1830

VARRO.—SOCRATES.—GREEK PHILOSOPHY.—PLOTINUS.—TERTULLIAN

What a loss we have had in Varro's mythological and critical works! It is said that the works of Epicurus are probably amongst the Herculanean manuscripts. I do not feel much interest about them, because, by the consent of all antiquity, Lucretius has preserved a complete view of his system. But I regret the loss of the works of the old Stoics, Zeno and others, exceedingly.

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Socrates, as such, was only a poetical character to Plato, who worked upon his own ground. The several disciples of Socrates caught some particular points from him, and made systems of philosophy upon them according to their own views. Socrates himself had no system.

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I hold all claims set up for Egypt having given birth to the Greek philosophy, to be groundless. It sprang up in Greece itself, and began with physics only.

Then it took in the idea of a living cause, and made pantheism out of the two. Socrates introduced ethics, and taught duties; and then, finally, Plato asserted or re-asserted the idea of a God the maker of the world. The measure of human philosophy was thus full, when Christianity came to add what before was wanting—assurance. After this again, the Neo-Platonists joined theurgy with philosophy, which ultimately degenerated into magic and mere mysticism.

Plotinus was a man of wonderful ability, and some of the sublimest passages I ever read are in his works.

I was amused the other day with reading in Tertullian, that spirits or demons dilate and contract themselves, and wriggle about like worms— lumbricix similes.

September 26. 1830

SCOTCH AND ENGLISH LAKES

The five finest things in Scotland are—1. Edinburgh; 2. The antechamber of the Fall of Foyers; 3. The view of Loch Lomond from Inch Tavannach, the highest of the islands; 4. The Trosachs; 5. The view of the Hebrides from a point, the name of which I forget. But the intervals between the fine things in Scotland are very dreary;—whereas in Cumberland and Westmoreland there is a cabinet of beauties,—each thing being beautiful in itself, and the very passage from one lake, mountain, or valley, to another, is itself a beautiful thing again. The Scotch lakes are so like one another, from their great size, that in a picture you are obliged to read their names; but the English lakes, especially Derwent Water, or rather the whole vale of Keswick, is so rememberable, that, after having been once seen, no one ever requires to be told what it is when drawn. This vale is about as large a basin as Loch Lomond; the latter is covered with water; but in the former instance, we have two lakes with a charming river to connect them, and lovely villages at the foot of the mountain, and other habitations, which give an air of life and cheerfulness to the whole place.

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The land imagery of the north of Devon is most delightful.

September 27. 1830

LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP OPPOSED.—MARRIAGE.—CHARACTERLESSNESS OF WOMEN

A person once said to me, that he could make nothing of love, except that it was friendship accidentally combined with desire. Whence I concluded that he had never been in love. For what shall we say of the feeling which a man of sensibility has towards his wife with her baby at her breast! How pure from sensual desire! yet how different from friendship!

Sympathy constitutes friendship; but in love there is a sort of antipathy, or opposing passion. Each strives to be the other, and both together make up one whole.

Luther has sketched the most beautiful picture of the nature, and ends, and duties of the wedded life I ever read. St. Paul says it is a great symbol, not mystery, as we translate it.[76 - Greek: –]

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"Most women have no character at all," said Pope[77 - "Nothing so true as what you once let fall—'Most women have no character at all,'—Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,And best distinguish'd by black, brown, and fair."Epist. to a Lady, v. I.] and meant it for satire. Shakspeare, who knew man and woman much better, saw that it, in fact, was the perfection of woman to be characterless.

Every one wishes a Desdemona or Ophelia for a wife,—creatures who, though they may not always understand you, do always feel you, and feel with you.

September 28. 1830

MENTAL ANARCHY

Why need we talk of a fiery hell? If the will, which is the law of our nature, were withdrawn from our memory, fancy, understanding, and reason, no other hell could equal, for a spiritual being, what we should then feel, from the anarchy of our powers. It would be conscious madness—a horrid thought!

October 5. 1830

EAR AND TASTE FOR MUSIC DIFFERENT.–ENGLISH LITURGY.–BELGIAN REVOLUTION

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

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An ear for music is a very different thing from a taste for music. I have no ear whatever; I could not sing an air to save my life; but I have the intensest delight in music, and can detect good from bad. Naldi, a good fellow, remarked to me once at a concert, that I did not seem much interested with a piece of Rossini's which had just been performed. I said, it sounded to me like nonsense verses. But I could scarcely contain myself when a thing of Beethoven's followed.

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I never distinctly felt the heavenly superiority of the prayers in the English liturgy, till I had attended some kirks in the country parts of Scotland, I call these strings of school boys or girls which we meet near London—walking advertisements.

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The Brussels riot—I cannot bring myself to dignify it with a higher name —is a wretched parody on the last French revolution. Were I King William, I would banish the Belgians, as Coriolanus banishes the Romans in Shakspeare.[78 - "You common cry of curs! whose breath I hateAs reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prizeAs the dead carcasses of unburied menThat do corrupt my air, I banish you;And here remain with your uncertainty!"Act iii. sc. 3.]

It is a wicked rebellion without one just cause.

October 8. 1830

GALILEO, NEWTON, KEPLER, BACON

Galileo was a great genius, and so was Newton; but it would take two or three Galileos and Newtons to make one Kepler.[79 - Galileo Galilei was born at Pisa, on the 15th of February, 1564. John Kepler was born at Weil, in the duchy of Wirtemberg, on the 2lst of December, 1571.—ED.] It is in the order of Providence, that the inventive, generative, constitutive mind—the Kepler— should come first; and then that the patient and collective mind—the Newton—should follow, and elaborate the pregnant queries and illumining guesses of the former. The laws of the planetary system are, in fact, due to Kepler. There is not a more glorious achievement of scientific genius upon record, than Kepler's guesses, prophecies, and ultimate apprehension of the law[80 - Namely, that the squares of their times vary as the cubes of their distances,—ED.] of the mean distances of the planets as connected with the periods of their revolutions round the sun. Gravitation, too, he had fully conceived; but, because it seemed inconsistent with some received observations on light, he gave it up, in allegiance, as he says, to Nature. Yet the idea vexed and haunted his mind; "Vexat me et lacessit," are his words, I believe.

We praise Newton's clearness and steadiness. He was clear and steady, no doubt, whilst working out, by the help of an admirable geometry, the idea brought forth by another. Newton had his ether, and could not rest in—he could not conceive—the idea of a law. He thought it a physical thing after all. As for his chronology, I believe, those who are most competent to judge, rely on it less and less every day. His lucubrations on Daniel and the Revelations seem to me little less than mere raving.

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Personal experiment is necessary, in order to correct our own observation of the experiments which Nature herself makes for us—I mean, the phenomena of the universe. But then observation is, in turn, wanted to direct and substantiate the course of experiment. Experiments alone cannot advance knowledge, without observation; they amuse for a time, and then pass off the scene and leave no trace behind them.