Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 392, June, 1848

"Done his duty, and reformed the unhappy wretch," said my father. "Nemo repentè turpissimus semper fuit– No man is wholly bad all at once."

"The father did as you would have, advised, brother. He kept the youth; he remonstrated with him; he did more – he gave him the key of the bureau. 'Take what I have to give,' said he: 'I would rather be a beggar than know my son a thief.'"

"Right: and the youth repented, and became a good man?" exclaimed my father.

Captain Roland shook his head. "The youth promised amendment, and seemed penitent. He spoke of the temptations of Paris, the gaining-table, and what not. He gave up his daily visit to the capital. He seemed to apply to study." Shortly after this, the neighbourhood was alarmed by reports of night robberies on the road. Men, masked and armed, plundered travellers, and even broke into houses.

The police were on the alert. One night an old brother officer knocked at my friend's door. It was late: the veteran (he was a cripple, by the way, like myself – strange coincidence!) was in bed. He came down in haste, when his servant woke, and told him that his old friend, wounded and bleeding, sought an asylum under his roof. The wound, however, was slight. The guest had been attacked and robbed on the road. The next morning the proper authority of the town was sent for. The plundered man described his loss – some billets of five hundred francs in a pocket-book, on which was embroidered his name and coronet (he was a vicomte.) The guest stayed to dinner. Late in the forenoon the son looked in. The guest started to see him: my friend noticed his paleness. Shortly after, on pretence of faintness, the guest retired to his room, and sent for his host. 'My friend,' said he, 'can you do me a favour? go to the magistrate, and recall the evidence I have given.'

"'Impossible,' said the host. 'What crotchet is this?'

"The guest shuddered. 'Peste!' said he: 'I do not wish in my old age to be hard on others. Who knows how the robber may have been tempted, and who knows what relations he may have – honest men, whom his crime would degrade for ever! Good heavens! if detected, it is the galleys, the galleys!'

"'And what then? – the robber knew what he braved.'

"'But did his father know it?' cried the guest.

"A light broke upon my unhappy comrade in arms: he caught his friend by the hand – 'You turned pale at my son's sight – where did you ever see him before? Speak!'

"'Last night, on the road to Paris. The mask slipped aside. Call back my evidence!'

"'You are mistaken,' said my friend calmly. 'I saw my son in his bed, and blessed him, before I went to my own.'

"'I will believe you,' said the guest; 'and never shall my hasty suspicion pass my lips – but call back the evidence.'

"The guest returned to Paris before dusk. The father conversed with his son on the subject of his studies; he followed him to his room, waited till he was in bed, and was then about to retire, when the youth said, 'Father, you have forgotten your blessing.'

"The father went back, laid his hand on the boy's head, and prayed. He was credulous – fathers are so! He was persuaded his friend had been deceived. He retired to rest, and fell asleep. He woke suddenly in the middle of the night, and felt (I here quote his words) – 'I felt,' said he 'as if a voice had awakened me – a voice that said 'Rise and search.' I rose at once, struck a light, and went to my son's room. The door was locked. I knocked once, twice, thrice – no answer. I dared not call aloud, lest I should rouse the servants. I went down the stairs – I opened the back-door – I passed to the stables. My own horse was there, not my son's. My horse neighed: it was old, like myself – my old charger at Mount St Jean! I stole back, I crept into the shadow of the wall by my son's door, and extinguished my light. I felt as if I were a thief myself.'"

"Brother," interrupted my mother under her breath; "speak in your own words, not in this wretched father's. I know not why, but it would shock me less."

The Captain nodded.

"Before daybreak, my friend heard the back-door open gently; a foot ascended the stair – a key grated in the door of the room close at hand – the father glided through the dark into that chamber, behind his unseen son.

"He heard the clink of the tinder box; a light was struck; it spread over the room, but he had time to place himself behind the window curtain which was close at hand. The figure before him stood a moment or so motionless, and seemed to listen, for it turned to the right, to the left, its visage covered with the black hideous mask which is worn in carnivals. Slowly the mask was removed; could that be his son's face? the son of a brave man? – it was pale and ghastly with scoundrel fears; the base drops stood on the brow; the eye was haggard and bloodshot. He looked as a coward looks when death stands before him.

"The youth walked, or rather sculked to the secretaire, unlocked it, opened a secret drawer; placed within it the contents of his pockets and his frightful mask; the father approached softly, looked over his shoulder, and saw in the drawer the pocket-book embroidered with his friend's name. Meanwhile, the son took out his pistols, uncocked them cautiously, and was about also to secrete them, when his father arrested his arm. 'Robber, the use of these is yet to come.'

"The son's knees knocked together, an exclamation for mercy burst from his lips; but when, recovering the mere shock of his dastard nerves, he perceived it was not the gripe of some hireling of the law, but a father's hand that had clutched his arm, the vile audacity which knows fear only from a bodily cause, none from the awe of shame, returned to him.

"'Tush, sir,' he said, 'waste not time in reproaches, for, I fear, the gens-d'armes are on my track. It is well that you are here; you can swear that I have spent the night at home. Unhand me, old man – I have these witnesses still to secrete,' and he pointed to the garments wet and dabbled with the mud of the roads. He had scarcely spoken when the walls shook, there was the heavy clatter of hoofs on the ringing pavement without.

"'They come!' cried the son. 'Off dotard! save your son from the galleys.'

"'The galleys, the galleys!' said the father, staggering back; 'it is true – he said 'the galleys.''

"There was a loud knocking at the gate. The gens-d'armes surrounded the house. 'Open in the name of the law.' No answer came, no door was opened. Some of the gens-d'armes rode to the rear of the house, in which was placed the stable-yard. From the window of the son's room, the father saw the sudden blaze of torches, the shadowy forms of the men-hunters. He heard the clatter of arms as they swung themselves from their horses. He heard a voice cry 'Yes, this is the robber's gray horse – see, it still reeks with sweat!' And behind and in front, at either door, again came the knocking, and again the shout, 'Open in the name of the law.'

"Then lights began to gleam from the casements of the neighbouring houses; then the space filled rapidly with curious wonderers startled from their sleep; the world was astir, and the crowd came round to know what crime or what shame had entered the old soldier's home.

"Suddenly, within, there was heard the report of a firearm; and a minute or so afterwards the front door was opened, and the soldier appeared.

"'Enter,' he said, to the gens-d'armes: 'what would you?'

"'We seek a robber who is within your walls.'

"'I know it, mount and find him: I will lead the way.'

"He ascended the stairs, he threw open his son's room; the officers of justice poured in, and on the floor lay the robber's corpse.

"They looked at each other in amazement. 'Take what is left you,' said the father. 'Take the dead man rescued from the galleys, take the living man on whose hands rests the dead man's blood!'

"I was present at my friend's trial. The facts had become known beforehand. He stood there with his gray hair, and his mutilated limbs, and the deep scar on his visage, and the cross of the legion of honour on his breast; and when he had told his tale, he ended with these words – 'I have saved the son whom I reared for France, from a doom that spared the life to brand it with disgrace. Is this a crime? I give you my life in exchange for my son's disgrace. Does, my country need a victim? I have lived for my country's glory, and I can die contented to satisfy its laws; sure that if you blame me, you will not despise; sure that the hands that give me to the headsman will scatter flowers over my grave. Thus I confess all. I, a soldier, look round amongst a nation of soldiers; and in the name of the star which glitters on my breast, I dare the fathers of France to condemn me!'

"They acquitted the soldier, at least they gave a verdict answering to what in our courts is called 'justifiable homicide.' A shout rose in the court, which no ceremonial voice could still; the crowd would have borne him in triumph to his house, but his look repelled such vanities. To his house he returned indeed, and the day afterwards they found him dead, beside the cradle in which his first prayer had been breathed over his sinless child. Now, father and son, I ask you, do you condemn that man?"

CHAPTER VIII

My father took three strides up and down the room, and then, halting on his hearth, and facing his brother, he thus spoke – "I condemn his deed, Roland! At best he was but a haughty egotist. I understand why Brutus should slay his sons. By that sacrifice he saved his country! What did this poor dupe of an exaggeration save? nothing but his own name. He could not lift the crime from his son's soul, nor the dishonour from his son's memory. He could but gratify his own vain pride, and, insensibly to himself, his act was whispered to him by the fiend that ever whispers to the heart of man, 'Dread men's opinions more than God's law!' Oh, my dear brother, what minds like yours should guard against the most is not the meanness of evil – it is the evil that takes false nobility, by garbing itself in the royal magnificence of good." My uncle walked to the window, opened it, looked out a moment, as if to draw in fresh air, closed it gently, and came back again to his seat; but during the short time the window had been left open, a moth flew in.

"Tales like these," renewed my father, pityingly – "whether told by some great tragedian or in thy simple style, my brother, – tales like these have their uses: they penetrate the heart to make it wiser; but all wisdom is meek, my Roland. They invite us to put the question to ourselves that thou hast asked – 'Can we condemn this man?' and reason answers, as I have answered – 'We pity the man, we condemn the deed.' We – take care, my love! that moth will be in the candle. We —whish! – whish!" – and my father stopped to drive away the moth. My uncle turned, and taking his handkerchief from the lower part of his face, on which he had wished to conceal the workings, he flapped away the moth from the flame. My mother moved the candles from the moth. I tried to catch the moth in my father's straw-hat. The deuce was in the moth, it baffled us all; now circling against the ceiling, now swooping down at the fatal lights. As if by a simultaneous impulse, my father approached one candle, my uncle approached the other; and just as the moth was wheeling round and round, irresolute which to choose for its funeral pyre, both were put out. The fire had burned down low in the grate, and in the sudden dimness my father's soft sweet voice came forth as if from an invisible being: – "We leave ourselves in the dark to save a moth from the flame, brother! shall we do less for our fellow-men? Extinguish, oh! humanely extinguish the light of our reason, when the darkness more favours our mercy." Before the lights were relit, my uncle had left the room. His brother followed him; my mother and I drew near to each other and talked in whispers.

GUESSES AT TRUTH

[12 - Guesses at Truth. By Two Brothers. Third Edition. First series.]We remember perusing this book soon after its first appearance. The shortness of the several sections into which it is divided, and the frequent change of topics, keeping the mind in a constant state of expectation, prevented us, we suppose, from feeling at that time a sense of weariness. In the perpetual anticipation of finding something new in the next paragraph or section, we forgot the disappointment which the last had so often occasioned. It is only thus we can explain the difference of feeling with which we have re-perused this third and late edition of the same work. The brevity of chapters, and interchange of topics, could not practise their kindly deception on us twice. Like those intertwisted walks in a confined shrubbery, which are designed to cheat the pedestrian into the idea of vast extent of space, the imposition succeeds but once. At the second perambulation we discover within what narrow boundaries we have been led up and down, and made our profitless circuit. We are compelled to say that an exceeding weariness came over us on the second perusal of these Guesses at Truth. Notwithstanding the modesty of the title, there are few books which wear so perpetually the air of superiority, of profound and subtle thought, with so very little to justify the pretension. There is a constant smile of self-complacency – but it plays over a very barren landscape. The soil is sterile on which this sunshine is resting. It is not uninstructive to notice how far an assumption of superiority, coupled with a form of composition indulgent to the reader's attention, and stimulating to his curiosity, may succeed in giving popularity and very respectable reputation to a work which, when examined closely, proves to be made up of materials of the slightest possible value.

We are the more disposed to look a little into these Guesses at Truth, because they afford a fair specimen of the manner and lucubrations of a small class, or coterie, whom we have had amongst us, and who may be best described as the Coleridgean school of philosophers. It is a class distinguished by the thorough contempt it manifests for all whom the world has been accustomed to consider as clear and painstaking thinkers – by an overweening, quiet arrogance – by a general indolence of mind interrupted by fitful efforts of thought, and much laborious trifling. They are not genuine conscientious thinkers after any order of philosophy; they are as little followers of Kant as they are of Locke; but they take advantage of the name and reputation of the one to speak with something approximating to disdain of the superficiality of the other. That they alone are right – would be fair enough. To one who strenuously labours to bring out and establish his principles, we readily permit a great confidence in his own opinion; if he did not think others wrong and himself alone right, why should he be labouring at our conviction? But these gentlemen do not labour; they have earned nothing with the sweat of their brow; they hover over all things with a consummate self-complacency; they investigate nothing; they condescend to understand no one. Men of indolent ability, they would be supposed calmly to overlook the whole field of philosophic controversy, and by dint of some learning, by the perpetual proclamation of the shallowness of their contemporaries, and a mysterious intimation of profundities of thought of their own, which they are sufficiently cautious not to attempt too fully to reveal, – they certainly contrive to make a marvellous impression upon the good-natured reader.

That we are right in pronouncing Coleridge as the master who has formed this coterie of writers, many passages in the present work would testify; but Archdeacon Hare, the author of the greater portion of it, has very lately, in the plenitude of his years, proclaimed his great veneration, and a sort of allegiance, towards Coleridge the philosopher. To Coleridge the poet be all honour paid – we join in whatever applause may, within reasonable compass, be bestowed upon him; but Coleridge the sage, the metaphysician, the divine, is a very different person; and with all his undoubted genius, the very last man, we humbly conceive, to give a wise and steady direction to the thinking faculty of others. It is thus, however, that Archdeacon Hare, in his late Memoir of John Sterling, speaks of this wilful, fitful, erratic genius: – "At that time it was beginning to be acknowledged by more than a few that Coleridge is the true sovereign of modern English thought. The Aids to Reflection had recently been published, and were doing the work for which they were so admirably fitted; that book to which many, as has been said by one of Sterling's chief friends, 'owe even their own selves.' Few felt the obligation more deeply than Sterling. 'To Coleridge (he wrote to me in 1836) I owe education. He taught me to believe that an empirical philosophy is none; that faith is the highest reason; that all criticism, whether of literature, laws, or manners, is blind, without the power of discerning the organic unity of the object, &c., &c.'" He taught him to believe he had a meaning where he had none, to slight authors as shallow because they were lucid and intelligible, to substitute occasional efforts, and a dogmatism arising out of generous emotions, for the steady discipline of philosophy, and the calm inquiry after truth. The whole intellectual career of Sterling proves how unfortunate he was in having fallen under the dominion of this "true sovereign of modern English thought." With the finest moral temper in the world, we find him never, for two years together, with the same set of opinions, and his set of opinions at each time were such as a Coleridgean only could hold together in harmony.

Let any one not overawed by sounding reputations, examine the Aids to Reflection, – this work which gives a claim to the sovereignty of modern English thought, – the characteristic that will chiefly strike him is the predominance of hard writing, which at first wears the appearance, and is found to be the melancholy substitute, of hard thinking. On closer examination, he will be surprised to find how much space is wasted in verbal quibbles, which the author in vain endeavours to raise into importance; and how often the quotations from Leighton, dignified with the name of aphorisms, are such as any page of any sermon would have supplied him with. Amidst this jumble of crude metaphysics and distorted theology, there is from time to time an admirable observation admirably expressed; and there is also from time to time an absurdity so flagrant, that it requires all the author's skill of composition to redeem it from the charge of utter nonsense.

At the time when Coleridge wrote, what are known especially as German metaphysics had hardly reached our shores. He had studied them, or, like every active mind, had rather studied on them. They had given an impulse and direction to his own trains of thought; and if Coleridge had been capable of a continuous application, and a complete execution of any one work, he might have introduced a body of metaphysics into this country which, though due in its origin to German thinkers, would still have been justly entitled his own. But for this continuous labour he was not disposed: we have, therefore, a mere dim broken outline of a system of philosophy (intelligible only to those who have studied that system in other works) applied, in a very strange manner, to the dogmatic tenets of theology. This forms the basis of the Aids to Reflection; and very much of aid or assistance it must bring! We venture to say, that no one unacquainted, from any other source, with the speculations of Kant or Schelling, – let him give what attention, or bring what brains he may to his task, – can understand the refracted and partial representation of their tenets which Coleridge occasionally gives. Take, for instance, a long note, which every reader of the book must remember, upon Thesis and Antithesis, and Punctum Indifferens. With all the assistance of scholastic and geometrical terms, and that illustration abruptly enough introduced of "sulphuretted hydrogen," the reader, we are persuaded, if he comes fresh to the subject, must be utterly at a loss for a meaning. We have diagram and tabular view, and algebraic signs, and chemical illustration, and all the paraphernalia of a most desperate development of thought, and not one sentence of lucid explanation.

On the great subject of the existence of God, Coleridge appears to us to assume a most unsatisfactory and a somewhat perilous position. To oppose the school of Locke and Paley – far too simple for his taste – he gives a validity to the ambitious subtleties which made Shelley an atheist. The great argument from design, so convincing to us all, he slights, – it is too vulgar and commonplace for his purpose, – and finds his grounds of belief in the practical reason of Kant, (an afterthought of the philosopher of Kœnigsberg, and evidently at issue with the main tenets of his system,) or in certain ontological dogmas, which of all things are most open to dispute.

"I hold, then, it is true," he says, "that all the (so-called) demonstrations of a God either prove too little, as that from the order or apparent purpose in nature; or too much, namely, that the world is itself God; or they clandestinely involve the conclusion in the premises, passing off the mere analysis or explication of an assertion for the proof of it – a species of logical legerdemain not unlike that of the jugglers at a fair, who, putting into their mouths what seems to be a walnut, draw out a score yards of ribbon, as in the postulate of a First Cause. And, lastly, in all these demonstrations, the demonstrators presuppose the idea or conception of a God without being able to authenticate it; that is, to give an account whence they obtained it. For it is clear that the proof first mentioned, and the most natural and convincing of all (the cosmological, I mean, or that from the order of nature), presupposes the ontological; that is, the proof of a God from the necessity and necessary objectivity of the Idea. If the latter can assure us of a God as an existing reality. the former will go far to prove his power, wisdom, and benevolence. All this I hold. But I also hold, that the truth the hardest to demonstrate, is the one which, of all others, least needs to be demonstrated; that though there may be no conclusive demonstrations of a good, wise, living, and personal God, there are so many convincing reasons for it within and without – a grain of sand sufficing, and a whole universe at hand to echo the decision! – that for every mind not devoid of all reason, and desperately conscience-proof, the truth which it is the least possible to prove, it is little else than impossible not to believe, – only indeed, just so much short of impossible as to leave some room for the will, and the moral election, and thereby to keep it a truth of religion, and the possible subject of a commandment." – (P. 132.)

We are not very partial to this notion of a truth of the reason being a subject for the exercise of moral obedience, and least of all in the case of a truth, the recognition of which must precede any intelligible exercise of the religious conscience. In common with the vast majority of mankind, we hold that the cosmological argument is complete in itself. Ontology, as a branch of metaphysics placed in opposition to psychology, is, by the greater number of reflecting men, regarded as a mere shadow, the region of utter and hopeless obscurity. We know nothing in itself, – only its phenomena; being escapes us, except as that to which the phenomena belong. If we prove, or rather if we see, order and wisdom in the material world, we have all the demonstration of a being, intelligent and wise, that our minds are capable of receiving. We have the same proof for the being of God, as we have for the existence of matter or of mind; we cannot have more, and we have not a jot less.

By way of compensation, our philosopher, when he is once in possession of the Idea of God, evolves from it, by unassisted reason, the most profound mysteries of revealed religion. Mark here the elated step of the triumphant logician: —

"I form a certain notion in my mind, and say, 'This is what I understand by the term God.' From books and conversation, I find that the learned generally connect the same notion with the same word. I then apply the rules laid down by the masters of logic for the involution and evolution of terms [the conjurer that he is!] and prove, to as many as agree with me in my premises, that the notion God involves the notion Trinity." – (P. 126.)

The further description of this successful process of the involution and evolution of terms is postponed to a future work. It was a strange and somewhat affected position that Coleridge assumed between the philosophical and the religious world. He would belong to both, and yet would be unhappy if you did not regard him as standing apart and alone. He was the Punctum Indifferens, which might be both, or neither. The philosopher among divines, the divine among philosophers, he was delighted to appear to each class in a masquerade drawn from the wardrobe of the other. Even on the most ordinary occasions, he would sometimes eke out, or obscure, his explanations by a little of the dialect of the chapel, or the meeting-house. Near the commencement of the book is the following note: —

"Distinction between Thought and Attention. – By Thought is here meant the voluntary reproduction in our own minds of those states of consciousness, or (to use a phrase more familiar to the religious reader) of those inward experiences, to which, as to his best and most authentic documents, the teacher of moral and religious truth refers us. In Attention, we keep the mind passive; in Thought, we rouse it into activity. In the former, we submit to an impression, – we keep the mind steady in order to receive the stamp. In the latter, we seek to imitate the artist, while we ourselves make a copy or duplicate of his work. We may learn arithmetic or the elements of geometry by continued attention alone; but self-knowledge, or an insight into the laws and constitution of the human mind, and, the grounds of religion and true morality, in addition to the effort of attention, requires the energy of thought."