Coleridge as Philosopher

COLERIDGE AS PHILOSOPHER by JOHN H. MUIRHEAD M. A., GLASGOW AND OXFORD LL. D., GLASGOW AND CALIFORNIA EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM LONDON GEORGE ALLEN UNWIN LTD NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY IIST XQ3O II rights I2SX Yea, oft alone. Piercing the long neglected holy cave. The haunt obscure of old Philosophy, He bade with lifted torch its starry walls Sparkle, as erst they sparkled to the flame Of odorous lamps tended by Saint and Sage. COLERIDGE A Tombless Epitaph Thou that within me art, my Self An Ey Or Temple of a wide Infinity O What a World art Thou a World within In thee appear All Things, and are Alive in Thee Super-Substantial, rare, Abov themselves, and near a-kin To those pure Things we find In His Great Mind, Who made the World Tho now eclipsed by Sin, Yet this within my Intellect Is found, when on it I reflect. THOMAS TRAHERNE My Spirit PREFACE THE following study was undertaken in the con viction, gathered from a superficial acquaintance with Coleridges published works, that as a stage in the development of a national form of idealistic philosophy his ideas are far more important than has hitherto been realized either by the educated public or by professed students of the subject. Closer study of them further convinced me that they formed in his mind a far more coherent body of philosophical thought than he has been any where credited with, and that to do fuller justice to this side of his multifarious and miraculous activity a more serious attempt than any with which I was acquainted required to be made to set them in relation to the state of philosophy at the time, and to the great revival of metaphysical study in England which the latter half of the nineteenth century was to witness. There was obvious diffi culty, and not less obvious risk in any such attempt. The difficulty consisted not merely in the wide diffusion of the sources from which, in his published works, his philosophical opinions had to be gathered, but in the popular character of the writings in which the more explicit statements of them were contained We know in our own time how much injury in respect to depth and coherence may be done by the occasionalism 55 , of so much of the philosophical writing of England and America. Bradley used to deplore the loss to philosophy caused by William Jamess continual occupation 16 COLERIDGE AS PHILOSOPHER with popular exposition in lecture form. In Coleridges case his own ardent missionary spirit combined with his straitened circumstances was a constant temptation to dissipate his powers in practical applications instead of in the systematic development of his ideas. If Lambs gibe as to his preaching was an exaggeration, something like it may be said of his crusading activities against what he considered the secular and materialistic spirit of his time and country. The risk of such an attempt as is here made is that the brilliant flashes of his innumerable apergus should be robbed of their delightful element of surprise by being made to appear merely side lights of a duller if steadier illumination, and that what was the outcome of the poetry within him finding new means of utterance, after it had died out in its proper medium of verse, should be reduced to the prose of doctrinaire philosophy. Coleridge suffers, writes Leslie Stephen, 1 when any attempt is made to extract a philo sophical system from his works. His admirers must limit themselves to claims for what he undoubtedly deserves, the honour of having done much to stimulate thought, and abandon any claim to the construction of a definite system. Fortunately the light thrown upon the whole subject by the recent direction of attention to important manuscript remains has relieved the 1 Art. e Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the Dictionary of National Biography. Cp. Hours in a Library, essay on Coleridge, vol. iv. Coleridge never constructed a system...