Materials for Study of Coleridge’s Philosophy
REFERENCE has been made in the Preface to the sources available for the study of Coleridge’s philosophical opinions, but some fuller account is called for by reason of their multifariousness. They consist of: 1, His own published prose works. 2, Letters to friends, collections of Table Talk, and reminiscences of others. 3, Various manuscript remains, as yet for the most part unpublished, including marginal notes on those of the 340 books1 containing them, which are of philosophic interest. To these deserves to .be added the book Spiritual Philosophy, as an exposition of the leading principles of his Master’s thought by his most intimate and understanding friend, Joseph Henry Green.
1. The most important of the first group are:—
The Friend, reprinted from the numbers that appeared 1809–10 in 1812; 3 vol. ed., 1818, described by Coleridge in the Preface as “a refacciamento rather than a new edition”, “the additions forming so large a proportion of the whole work and the arrangement being altogether new”; 3rd edition, edited by Henry Nelson Coleridge, with the author’s latest corrections and appendices restoring some passages omitted in the 1818 edition.
Biographia Literaria, 1st ed., 1817; 2nd ed. (H. N. Coleridge and Sarah Coleridge), 1847; frequently edited since.
A Preliminary Treatise on Method, written as the General Introduction to the Encyclopaedia Metropolitania, published separately as Principles of the Science of Method, 1818: much “bedeviled, interpolated, and topsy-turvied” to the disgust of the author (Campbell’s Life, p. 227 foll.).
Aids to Reflection, 1st ed., London, 1825; 2nd ed., New York, 1839; 5th ed. by Henry Nelson Coleridge, London, 1843 ; frequently edited since.
Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit, ed. H. N. Coleridge, 1840.
Hints toward the Formation of a more Comprehensive Theory of Life, ed. Seth B. Watson, 1848.
2. Under the second head come:—
(a) Collections of Letters that kept appearing up to 1911. The most important are Letters, Conversations, and Recollections by Thomas Allsop, 2 vols., 1836.
Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, by Ernest Hartley Coleridge, 2 vols., 1895.
Biographia Literaria, by A. Turnbull, 1911.
(b) Joseph Cottle’s Early Recollections, 1837, and Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, 1847.
Henry Crabb Robinson’s Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence, 1872.
Two “monologues” published in Fraser’s Magazine, November and December 1835, on “Life” and “The Science and System of Logic”, by a member of Coleridge’s logic class.
3. The manuscript remains consist of (a) unfinished works :—
(a) Two Volumes on Logic in the British Museum (Egerton 2825 and 2826). Of these an analysis with extracts will be found in Miss Alice D. Snyder’s book, Coleridge on Logic and Learning, pp. 78–103 and 104–27. The MS. is in the hand of several amanuenses with marginal annotations by Charles A. Ward, one time owner of it, and is undoubtedly the work alluded to in the letters of November 27, 1820, September 24, 1821, December 1822 (Allsop, op. cit.), in Aids to Reflection (ed. 1825, p. 174 n.), and in J. H. Green’s Spiritual Philosophy, vol. i. p. 51. A list of sixteen chapters (imperfectly indicated in the MS. itself) is given at the beginning, showing as it goes from “History of Logic”, “Philosophy of Education”, “Logic as Canon”, “Logical Acts” to a treatment of “Analytic and Synthetic Judgments”, and finally of “Categories”, more and more the influence of Kant’s Critique upon Coleridge’s conception of the scope of the science.
If this manuscript is the copy referred to in the last two of the above letters as practically completed and only awaiting transcription, Coleridge must have been speaking with more than his usual sanguineness. It is manifestly incomplete, and bears marks of illiteracy on every page. Miss Snyder has discussed, and on the whole justified, Green’s decision against publishing it. But if, as now seems likely, the not less incomplete and unrevised Opus Maximum with other philosophical fragments are going to be printed, I see no reason for making an exception of the Logic. The study of philosophy in England and America has advanced in vain during the present generation if the student may not be trusted to select the ore and leave the dross in the work of its pioneers.
(b) More important for the study of Coleridge’s philo sophy in its later and more metaphysical developments is the manuscript preserved in three vellum-bound volumes in the possession of the Rev. Gerard H. B. Coleridge, of Leatherhead, marked conjecturally in Charles Ward’s hand, vol. i, ii, iii—an order which Miss Snyder, on equally conjectural grounds, proposes to reverse. This is undoubtedly a part of the Opus Maximum to which Coleridge, as he tells us in a letter of 1821,2 had devoted “more than twenty years of his life”, and of which “more than half” at that time “had been dictated by him so as to exist, fit for the press, to his friend and devoted pupil Mr. Green”. Whether this is the actual copy referred to or not, its authenticity is guaranteed by the frequent autograph corrections in important passages.
(c) Clearly a part of the same work, and with the same marks of authenticity, is the manuscript in possession of the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. It consists of a long chapter (unnumbered) “On the Divine Ideas”3 devoted to the discussion of the problem of moral evil followed by part of a still longer one without a title, which begins with a carefully drawn out Criticism of the Plotinian idea of the Trinity as contrasted with the Christian, but is chiefly occupied with the question of the sense in which it is possible to demonstrate the existence and attributes of God either on the ground of direct intuition, or as a logical inference from the data of experience. The discussion of Brahminism as an attempt of the former kind offers scope to the imaginative as well as the critical genius of the poet-philosopher of which he is not slow to avail himself. The manuscript abruptly ends in the middle of an introduction to a discussion of Berkeley’s proof of the being of God in the Minute Philosopher.
It is possible, perhaps even probable, that other parts of the MS. of the Opus Maximum survive, and may still be found. Sufficient has been quoted from those which we have to show how far, on the subjects dealt with, they supersede all that is derivable from other sources. As compared with anything we have in the published works they show a mastery of the implications of his own fundamental principles, and a command of his materials that makes their fragmentary character all the more deplorable.
(d) Of unique interest, as containing autograph notes dating apparently from 1825 of his later views on many philosophical subjects, is the manuscript commonplace book with the characteristic title, “Semina Rerum, Audita, Cogitata, Cogitanda of a Man of Letters, friendless because of no Faction, repeatedly and in strong language inculpated of hiding his Light under a Bushel, yet destined to see publication after publication abused by the Edinburgh Review, as the representative of one Party, and not even noticed by the Quarterly Review as the Representative of the other—and to receive as the meed of his labours for the Cause of freedom against Despotry and Jacobinism, of the Church against Infidelity and Schism, and of Principle against Fashion and Sciolism, Slander, Loss, and Embarrassment”. At the end it contains under the date May 24, 1828, a synopsis of his metaphysical system—“more nearly approaching”, as Miss Snyder notes,4 “the epic in the quality of its conception than do any of his published prose works”— placed on record “by S. T. C., R. A., R. S. L., etc.
Author of Tomes, whereof tho’ not in Dutch,
The Public little knows, the Publisher too much.”
(e) Coleridge’s reputation as a philosophical thinker has suffered more from the evidences of plagiarism (whether conscious or unconscious) in his writings than from any other cause. What makes the multitudinous marginal notes on philosophical books used by him, that have come down to us, of such extreme value is the comment they enable us to make on this subject, through the proof they afford of the alertness of his critical faculty in regard to the authors from whom he is alleged to have plagiarized. For illustrations on fundamental doctrines the reader may be referred to the above Study. The sources themselves are not all accessible, but the most important of the notes are gradually becoming available, and those which are most important for Coleridge’s relation to contemporary philosophers are fortunately to be found in copies of works used by him which arc preserved in the British Museum.5 They include :—
Moses Mendelssohn’s Morgenstunden. Erster Theil (1790), and his Jerusalem (1791).6
Baron von Wolff’s Logic or Rational Thoughts on the Powers of the Human Understanding (Eng. Tr. 1770).7
Kant’s Vermischte Schriften; Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft (1793) ; Metaphysik der Sitten (1797).
Fichte’s Bestimmung des Menschen (1800) ; Versuch einer Kritique aller Offenbarung (1792).
Schelling’s Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur (1803); System des transcendentalen Idealismus (1800).
Tennemann’s Geschichte der Philosophie, twelve volumes (1794).
Hegel’s Wissenschaft der Logik, 1812–16.8
Besides these, the present writer has been able to consult two volumes of Marginalia, transcribed by E. H. Coleridge under date November 6 and 7, 1889, from the originals in possession of Lord Coleridge of Ottery St. Mary’s, containing notes, among other books, on Kant’s Critique of the Pure Reason; Jacobi’s Comments on Maas’s Versuch überdie Lehre d. Spinoza in Briefen an den Herrn Moses Mendelssohn ; Kant’s Allgemeine Natur geschichte und Theorie des Himmels ; Law’s English Version of the Works of Jacob Boehme, which had been presented to Coleridge by De Quincey.9 If these and his other philosophical marginalia were collated and published, as De Quincey hoped they would be, they would form a unique record not only of Coleridge’s enormous reading, but, in so far as they can be dated, of the growth of his opinions. Unfortunately they are seldom dated by Coleridge himself, and we are left to the more precarious light of internal evidence.
(f) If for no other reason than that of the light it throws on the single point of Coleridge’s attitude to the evolution hypothesis,10 the miscellaneous collection of fragments (British Museum, MS. Egerton 2801) deserves mention in this Appendix. The last of the sources mentioned in the above classification is peculiar enough, and has sufficient independent interest to have separate mention in a second Appendix.
1 See J. L. Haney’s Bibliography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
2 Allsop, op. cit., p. 82. Miss Snyder, op. cit., p. 8, gives a long list of other references to it.
3 When residing in Los Angeles for some months in 1928 I was unaware of the existence of this manuscript, and have only been able through the kindness of Professor Alice Snyder to read it in photostat copy since my return to England.
4 Op. cit., p. 3, where the synopsis is printed at length.
5 See Catalogue under S. T. Coleridge, sub fin. They are given out to be read only in North Reading Room.
6 Professor Snyder has given an account of these notes and their relation to the text of the MS. Logic in the Journal of English and Germanic Philosophy for October 1929.
7 Notes printed in full, Snyder, Coleridge on Logic and Learning, p. 158 foll.
8 Notes printed in full, Snyder, op. cit., p. 162 foll.
9 The annotations on Boehme are printed in Modern Language Notes for November 1927 (vol. xlii, No. 7, p. 434 foll.) by Miss Snyder.
10 See for these and other particulars of Green’s biography Dr. John Simon’s Memoir prefixed to Spiritual Philosophy, of which he was the editor.