HOW can a truth, new to us, be made our own without examination and self-questioning—any new truth, I mean, that relates to the properties of the mind, and its various faculties and affections? But whatever demands effort, requires time. Ignorance seldom vaults into knowledge, but passes into it through an intermediate state of obscurity, even as night into day through twilight. All speculative truths begin with a postulate, even the truths of geometry. They all suppose an act of the will; for in the moral being lies the source of the intellectual. The first step to knowledge, or rather the previous condition of all insight into truth, is to dare commune with our very and permanent self. It is Warburton’s remark, not the Friend’s, that ‘of all literary exercitations, whether designed for the use or entertainment of the world, there are none of so much importance, or so immediately our concern as those which let us into the knowledge of our own nature. Others may exercise the understanding or amuse the imagination; but these only can improve the heart and form the human mind to wisdom.’
The recluse hermit oft’times more doth know
Of the world’s inmost wheels, than worldlings can,
As Man is of the World, the Heart of Man
Is an Epitome of God’s great Book
Of Creatures, and Men need no further look.
Donne.
Friend.
A manuscript note on the front flyleaf of Tetens’ Philosophische Versuche, Bd. 2.
In the Chapters on Liberty and Necessity the old Delusion goes thro’ all—the motives, nay the reflections and deliberations (Bewegungsgründe, Ueberlegungen, Reflexionen) are reasoned on as outward things—i.e. outward to the Soul, tho’ inside of the Soul’s imagined Residence-chamber. A. determines himself this and Thither, therefore, A. does not determine himself! What are my motives but my impelling thoughts—and what is a Thought but another word for ‘I thinking’?
MS.
I feel that there is a mystery in the sudden by-act-of-will-unaided, nay, more than that, frustrated, recollection of a Name. I was trying to recollect the name of a Bristol Friend, who had attended me in my Illness at Mr Wade’s. I began with the Letters of the Alphabet—ABC &c.—and I know not why, felt convinced that it began with H. I ran thro’ all the vowels, aeiouy, and with all the consonants to each—Hab, Heb, Hib, Hob, Hub and so on—in vain. I then began other Letters—all in vain. Three minutes afterwards, having completely given it up, the name, Daniel, at once started up, perfectly insulated, without any the dimmest antecedent connection, as far as my consciousness extended. There is no explanation, 
, of this fact, but by a full sharp distinction of Mind from Consciousness—the Consciousness being the narrow Neck of the Bottle. The name, Daniel, must have been a living Atom-thought in my mind, whose uneasy motions were the craving to recollect it—but the very craving led the mind to a search which each successive disappointment (=a tiny pain) tended to contract the orifice or outlet into Consciousness. Well—it is given up—and all is quiet—the Nerves are asleep, or off their guard—and then the Name pops up, makes its way, and there it is!—not assisted by any association, but the very contrary—by the suspension and sedation of all associations.
MS.
*In Illustration of what I have written in my Cottle-book [Notebook 21] on Envy suspected where only resentment is felt, and an uneasiness at a non-harmony, the wish not to see any thing admirable where you find, especially in the moral character, any thing low or contemptible, and the consequent wish to avoid the struggle within—this anti-monadic feeling, this (what shall I say?) knowing, feeling, a man to be one, yet not understanding how to think of him but as two—in illustration of this* I confess that it has cost and still costs my philosophy some exertion not to be vexed that I must admire, aye, greatly, very greatly, admire Richardson. His mind is so very vile a mind—so oozy, hypocritical, praise-mad, canting, envious, concupiscent. But to understand and draw him would be to produce [a character] almost equal to any of his own, but in order to do this, ‘down proud Heart down!’ as we teach little Children to say to themselves—bless them!—(N.B. my fat boy, Derwent!)—all hatred down! Charity, Calmness, an heart fixed on the good parts, tho’ the Understanding is surveying all. Richardson felt truly the defect of Fielding, or rather what was not his excellence, and made that his Defect, a trick of Uncharitableness often played chiefly, tho’ not exclusively by Contemporaries. Fielding’s Talent was Observation not Meditation, but Richardson was not Philosopher enough to know the difference—say rather, to understand and develop it. *Strange! to bring two such names together, as Cottle’s and Richardson’s—yet amid and in spite of the vast difference there are points of resemblance and I must not be afraid to look steadily at them.
N.B. That deep intuition of our oneness—is it not at the bottom of many of our faults as well as Virtues—the dislike that a bad man should have any virtues, a good man any faults—and yet something noble and incentive is in this.*
MS.
As individual to individual, from my childhood, I do not remember feeling myself either superior or inferior to any human being; except by an act of my own will in cases of real or imagined moral or intellectual superiority. In regard to worldly rank, from eight years old to nineteen, I was habituated, nay, naturalized, to look up to men circumstanced as you are, as my superiors—a large number of our governors, and almost all of those whom we regarded as greater men still, and whom we saw most of, viz. our committee governors, were such—and as neither awake nor asleep have I any other feelings than what I had at Christ’s Hospital, I distinctly remember that I felt a little flush of pride and consequence—just like what we used to feel at school when the boys came running to us—‘Coleridge! here’s your friends want you—they are quite grand’, or ‘It is quite a lady’—when I first heard who you were, and laughed at myself for it with that pleasurable sensation that, spite of my sufferings at that school, still accompanies any sudden reawakening of our school-boy feelings and notions. And O, from sixteen to nineteen what hours of Paradise had Allen and I in escorting the Miss Evanses home on a Saturday, who were then at a milliner’s whom we used to think, and who I believe really was, such a nice lady;—and we used to carry thither, of a summer morning, the pillage of the flower gardens within six miles of town, with Sonnet or Love Rhyme wrapped round the nosegay. To be feminine, kind, and genteelly (what I should now call neatly) dressed, these were the only things to which my head, heart, or imagination had any polarity, and what I was then, I still am.
Allsop.
I devote this brief scroll to Feeling: so no more of disquisition, except it be to declare the entire coincidence of my experience with yours as to the very rare occurrence of strong and deep Feeling in conjunction with free power and vivacity in the expression of it. The most eminent Tragedians, Garrick for instance, are known to have had their emotions as much at command, and almost as much on the surface, as the muscles of their countenances; and the French, who are all Actors, are proverbially heartless. Is it that it is a false and feverous state for the Centre to live in the Circumference? The vital warmth seldom rises to the surface in the form of sensible Heat, without becoming hectic and inimical to the Life within, the only source of real sensibility. Eloquence itself—I speak of it as habitual and at call—too often is, and is always like to engender, a species of histrionism.
In one of my juvenile poems (on a Friend who died in a Frenzy Fever), you will find that I was jealous of this in myself; and that it is (as I trust it is), otherwise, I attribute mainly to the following causes:—A naturally, at once searching and communicative disposition, the necessity of reconciling the restlessness of an ever-working Fancy with an intense craving after a resting-place for my Thoughts in some principle that was derived from experience, but of which all other knowledge should be but so many repetitions under various limitations, even as circles, squares, triangles, etc., etc., are but so many positions of space. And, lastly, that my eloquence was most commonly excited by the desire of running away and hiding myself from my personal and inward feelings, and not for the expression of them, while doubtless this very effort of feeling gave a passion and glow to my thoughts
Sloth-jaundiced all! and from my graspless hand
Drop Friendship’s precious pearls, like hour-glass sand.
I weep, yet stoop not! the faint anguish flows,
A dreamy pang in Morning’s feverish dose.
Is this piled earth our Being’s passless mound?
Tell me, cold grave! is Death with poppies crowned?
Tired sentinel! ‘mid fitful starts I nod,
And fain would sleep, though pillowed on a clod.
and language on subjects of a general nature, that they otherwise would not have had. I fled in a Circle, still overtaken by the Feelings, from which I was ever more fleeing, with my back turned towards them; but above all, my growing deepening conviction of the transcendency of the moral to the intellectual, and the inexpressible comfort and inward strength which I experience myself to derive as often as I contemplate truth realized into Being by a human Will; so that, as I cannot love without esteem, neither can I esteem without loving. Hence I love but few, but those I love as my own Soul; for I feel that without them I should—not indeed cease to be kind and effluent, but by little and little become a soul-less fixed Star, receiving no rays nor influences into my Being, a Solitude which I so tremble at, that I cannot attribute it even to the Divine Nature.
Allsop.
Few are so obdurate, few have sufficient strength of character, to be able to draw forth an evil tendency or immoral practice into distinct consciousness, without bringing it in the same moment before an awaking conscience. But for this very reason it becomes a duty of conscience to form the mind to a habit of distinct consciousness. An unreflecting Christian walks in twilight among snares and pitfalls! He entreats the heavenly Father not to lead him into temptation, and yet places himself on the very edge of it, because he will not kindle the torch which his Father had given into his hands, as a means of prevention, and lest he should pray too late.
Aids to Reflection.
Art thou under the tyranny of sin? a slave to vicious habits? at enmity with God, and a skulking fugitive from thy own conscience? O, how idle the dispute, whether the listening to the dictates of prudence from prudential and self-interested motives be virtue or merit, when the not listening is guilt, misery, madness, and despair! The best, the most Christian-like pity thou canst show, is to take pity on thy own soul. The best and most acceptable service thou canst render, is to do justice and show mercy to thyself.
Aids to Reflection.
What makes a slave a slave? If I mistake not it is oppressions—it is the being in a state out of which he cannot hope to rise; and he who is placed where there is no motive for action but where the miserable thing he is must ever remain, in the same sphere, is a slave, and a pitiable one.
Philosophical Lectures.
Medicine hitherto has been too much confined to passive works—as if fevers &c.—were the only human calamities. A Gymnastic Medicine is wanting, not a mere recommendation but a system of forcing the Will and motive faculties into action. There are a multitude of cases which should be treated as Madness—i.e. the genus madness should be extended and more classes and species made, in practice, tho’ of course, not in name.1
MS.
Madness is not simply a bodily disease. It is the sleep of the spirit with certain conditions of wakefulness; that is to say, lucid intervals. During this sleep, or recession of the spirit, the lower or bestial states of life rise up into action and prominence. It is an awful thing to be eternally tempted by the perverted senses. The reason may resist—it does resist—for a long time; but too often at length, it yields for a moment, and the man is mad for ever. An act of the will is, in many instances, precedent to complete insanity. I think it was Bishop Butler, who said, that he was all his life struggling against the devilish suggestions of his senses, which would have maddened him, if he had relaxed the stern wakefulness of his reason for a single moment.
Table Talk.
[page cut]… all the realities about me lose their natural healing powers, at least, diminish the same, and become not worthy of a Thought. Who that thus lives with a continually divided Being can remain healthy! And who can long remain body-crazed, and not at times use unworthy means of making his Body the fit instrument of his mind? Pain is easily subdued compared with continual uncomfortableness—and the sense of stifled Power!—O this is that which made poor Henderson, Collins, Boyce, &c. &c. &c.—Sots—awful Thought—O it is horrid—Die, my Soul, die!—Suicide—rather than this, the worst state of Degradation! It is less a suicide! S.T.C.
I work hard, I do the duties of common Life from morn to night, but verily ‘I raise my limbs, like lifeless Tools’. The organs of motion and outward action perform their functions at the stimulus of a galvanic fluid applied by the Will, not by the Spirit of Life that makes Soul and Body one. Thought and Reality two distinct corresponding Sounds, of which no man can say positively which is the Voice and which the Echo.
O the beautiful Fountain or natural Well at Upper Stowey! [A line and a half of verse is here obliterated with heavy ink.] The images of the weeds which hung down from its sides, appeared as plants growing up, straight and upright, among the water weeds that really grow from the Bottom, and so vivid was the Image, that for some moments and not till after I had disturbed the water, did I perceive that their roots were not neighbours, and they side-by-side companions. So—even then I said—so are the happy man’s Thoughts and Things—in the language of the modern Philosophers, Ideas and Impressions.
MS.
In Mr. Burchell’s Travels in South Africa there is a very curious description of a singular Thorn-plant, which must have been quoted in some one of the Reviews or Philosoph[ical] Journals as I have never seen the Book itself. This I must refer to for—Impatiens? or Noli me Tangere?
The extract from Burchell, which was to have been inserted here, is as follows: I was preparing to cut some specimens of it [the Haakedoorn, or Hookthorn, or Acacia detinens]; which the Hottentots observing, warned me to be very careful in doing so, otherwise I should certainly be caught fast in its branches. In consequence of this advice, I proceeded with the utmost caution, but with all my care a small twig caught hold of one sleeve. While thinking to disengage it quietly with the other hand, both arms were seized by these rapacious thorns, and the more I tried to extricate myself, the more entangled I became; till at last it seized hold of the hat also; and convinced me that there was no possibility for me to free myself, but by main force, and at the expense of tearing all my clothes. I therefore called out for help, and two of my men came and released me by cutting off the branches by which I was held. In revenge for this ill-treatment, I determined to give to the tree a name which should serve to caution future travellers against allowing themselves to venture within its clutches.
Coleridge comments: Surely the wit of man could not present a livelier emblem of a Sinner entangled in the snares of a sinful Habit, without love to the Sin, nay with unutterable dread and condemnation of the same, tempted by no expectation, impelled by no desire, but goaded on by the inexorable Want, stung and chased onward by uncontrollable Restlessness, and cowed by the Pain that subsists in the bewildering Dread of Pain.
Lured by no vain Belief
Nor Hope that flatters Grief
To lawless Spells they flee
And borrow short Relief
At frightful Usury——
MS.
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!
Table Talk
Sunday, June 22nd 1806. Globe, Pisa. The concrete in nature nearest to the abstract of Death is Death by a Flash of Lightning. Repeatedly during this night’s storm have I desired that I might be taken off, not knowing when or where. But a few moments past a vivid flash passed across me, my nerves thrilled, and I earnestly wished, so help me God! like a Love-longing, that it would pass through me!—Death without pain, without degrees, without the possibility of cowardly wishes, or recreant changes of resolve. Death without deformity, or assassin-like self-disorganization. Death, in which the mind by its own wish might seem to have caused its own purpose to be performed, as instantaneously and by an instrument almost as spiritual as the Wish itself!
Come, come, thou bleak December Wind,
And blow the dry Leaves from the Tree.
Flash, like a Love-thought, thro’ me, Death
And take a Life, that wearies me.
MS.
Sarah Hutchinson
S. T. Coleridge
William Wordsworth
Malta.
Shall I ever see them again? And will it not [be] better that I should not? Is my body, and the habits and state of mind induced by it, such as to promise that I shall be other than a new Sorrow? O dear John! would I had been thy Substitute!
MS.
A person, nervously weak, has a sensation of weakness which is as bad to him as muscular weakness. The only difference lies in the better chance of removal.
Table Talk.
9 August 1831. From my earliest recollection I have had a consciousness of Power without Strength—a perception, an experience, of more than ordinary power with an inward sense of Weakness. O more than ever, tho’ I can and it would perhaps be instructive, to trace it thro’ the different periods of my Life, in characteristic instances—more than ever do I feel it now, when I have to struggle day after day with life-loathing Sickness, as my first Good-Morning to you! with life-wearying uneasiness of the lower Bowels, the more depressive, the meaner, duller and more obscure the disquieting Sensation, which forces away my attention to itself—and last, the dread at night, lest my night should be turned into day by the withholding of my best outward Relief, the partial Oblivion of Sleep. More than ever do I feel this now, when all my powers still in their integrity are, as it were, drawn inward and by their suppression and compression rendered a mock substitute for Strength—the sprays, boughs and branches compressed into a branchless leafless Trunk. But O Almighty God! who in thy free Mercy convertest manifoldly our evil from the weakness of the flesh into thy own good, O sanctify this affliction, to a deeper and more effectual Seeking of thee, as the Alone Strength thro’ the mediation of thy goodness, Christ Jesus!
MS.
I never from a boy could under any circumstances feel the slightest dread of death as such. In all my illnesses I have ever had the most intense desire to be released from this life, unchecked by any but one wish, namely, to be able to finish my work on philosophy. Not that I have any author’s vanity on the subject: God knows that I should be absolutely glad, if I could hear that the thing had already been done before me.
Illness never in the smallest degree affects my intellectual powers. I can think with all my ordinary vigour in the midst of pain; but I am beset with the most wretched and unmanning reluctance and shrinking from action. I could not upon such occasions take the pen in hand to write down my thoughts for all the wide world.
Table Talk
Mem. Alas! What use will Mem. be? The fullness, but much more the undesigningness of my mind, the habit and incapability of having any co-object with the point. I am arguing, totus in ilio, et mei et audientium immemor, make it of no use. Nevertheless, Mem. not to allow myself to [page cut].
MS.
The hypochondriac, or the intemperate man,—and his endless fruitless Memoranda, fruitless and perhaps pernicious as familiarising his mind to the Contemplation, the lazy Contemplation of his own Weakness.
MS.
I am never very forward in offering spiritual consolation to any one in distress or disease. I believe that such resources, to be of any service, must be self-evolved in the first instance. I am something of the Quaker’s mind in this, and am inclined to wait for the spirit.
Table Talk.
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.
Table Talk.
To carry on the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood, to combine the child’s sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which every day for perhaps forty years has rendered familiar,
With sun and moon and stars throughout the year,
And man and woman——
this is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks which distinguish genius from talent. And so to represent familiar objects as to awaken the minds of others to a like freshness of sensation concerning them—that constant accompaniment of mental, no less than of bodily, convalescence—to the same modest questioning of a self-discovered and intelligent ignorance, which, like the deep and massy foundations of a Roman bridge, forms half of the whole structure (prudens interrogatio dimidium Scientiae, says Lord Bacon)—this is the prime merit of genius, and its most unequivocal mode of manifestation. Who has not, a thousand times, seen it snow upon water? Who has not seen it with a new feeling, since he has read Burns’s comparison of sensual pleasure,
To snow that falls upon a river,
A moment white—then gone for ever!
In philosophy equally, as in poetry, genius produces the strongest impressions of novelty, while it rescues the stalest and most admitted truths from the impotence caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission. Extremes meet;—a proverb, by the by, to collect and explain all the instances and exemplifications of which, would constitute and exhaust all philosophy. Truths, of all others the most awful and mysterious, yet being at the same time of universal interest, are too often considered as so true that they lose all the powers of truth, and lie bed-ridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded errors.
Friend.
‘There are many men, especially at the outset of life, who, in their too eager desire for the end, overlook the difficulties in the way; there is another class, who see nothing else. The first class may sometimes fail; the latter rarely succeed.’
Allsop.
I have known strong minds with imposing, undoubting, Cobbett-like manners, but I have never met a great mind of this sort. And of the former, they are at least as often wrong as right. The truth is, a great mind must be androgynous. Great minds—Swedenborg’s for instance—are never wrong but in consequence of being in the right, but imperfectly.
Table Talk
Spurzheim is a good man, and I like him; but he is dense, and the most ignorant German I ever knew. If he had been content with stating certain remarkable coincidences between the moral qualities and the configuration of the skull, it would have been well; but when he began to map out the cranium dogmatically, he fell into infinite absurdities. You know, that every intellectual act, however you may distinguish it by name in respect of the originating faculties, is truly the act of the entire man; the notion of distinct material organs, therefore, in the brain itself, is plainly absurd. Pressed by this, Spurzheim has, at length, been guilty of some sheer quackery; and ventures to say that he has actually discovered a different material in the different parts or organs of the brain, so that he can tell a piece of benevolence from a bit of destructiveness, and so forth. Observe, also, that it is constantly found, that so far from there being a con-cavity in the interior surface of the cranium answering to the convexity apparent on the exterior—the interior is convex too. Dr. Baillie thought there was something in the system, because the notion of the brain being an extendible net helped to explain those cases where the intellect remained after the solid substance of the brain was dissolved in water.
That a greater or less development of the forepart of the head is generally coincident with more or less of reasoning power, is certain. The line across the forehead, also denoting musical power, is very common.
Table Talk.
Hysteria may be fitly called mimosa, from its counterfeiting so many diseases—even death itself.
Table Talk.
If any reflecting mind be surprised that the aids of the Divine Spirit should be deeper than our Consciousness can reach, it must arise from the not having attended sufficiently to the nature and necessary limits of human Consciousness. For the same impossibility exists as to the first acts and movements of our own will—the farthest back our recollection can follow the traces, never leads us to the first foot-mark—the lowest depth that the light of our Consciousness can visit even with a doubtful Glimmering, is still at an unknown distance from the Ground: and so, indeed, must it be with all Truths, and all modes of Being that can neither be counted, coloured, or delineated. Before and After, when applied to such Subjects, are but allegories, which the Sense or Imagination supply to the Understanding. The Position of the Aristoteleans, Nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu, on which Mr. Locke’s Essay is grounded, is irrefragable: Locke erred only in taking half the truth for a whole Truth. Conception is consequent on Perception. What we cannot imagine, we cannot, in the proper sense of the word, conceive.
Aids to Reflection.
Whence the contemptuous rejection of animal magnetism before and without examination? How are we to account for this extraordinary antipathy? Had it been a discovery of the same kind with that of the simple magnet, of electricity, above all, of the almost miraculous power (ex. gr. that of transferring substances, at indefinite distances) belonging to Galvanism; then its apparent contradiction to all the Laws hitherto known, as those of Cohesion, Gravitation, etc., might have justified, at all events, would palliate this preclusive contempt. Or had it been like the discovery of Copernicus, then its broad blank contradiction to the apparent evidence of the senses would make it at once intelligible, or, that men should refuse even to attend to the question and place it (as even so late as the restoration of Charles II. Sir T. Brown did) among the proofs that no absurdity can be so wild, but that some philosopher, or sect of Philosophy will assert it.—A collection of the a priori verdicts passed by men of the highest character, and pre-eminent in their generation, from the reign of Elizabeth to that of James the second, against the Copernican System (and in France, Spain, and Italy to a much later period) would be not merely entertaining but highly instructive. For who save those who build cenotaphs, and passed into a reverence of the prophets (as of Jeremiah and etc.) far too near idolatry—the prophets whom their Fore-Fathers had abused, ridiculed, and murdered? ‘We’ would not have done it! ‘No’—but yet these very ‘We’ were the persons who bellowed out ‘crucify him! Crucify him! And loose unto us Barabbas’ ‘Now Barabbas was a murderer’.
But in the case of Animal Magnetism there is no question concerning a Theory—the whole and sole demand is, to examine with common honesty and inward veracity a series of Facts—and these again not as the evidence of the circumstances that accompanied the first promulgation of Christianity, mere historical Facts, the irrecoverable property, and (as it were) the fixtures of the Past; but the reproducible Facts, facts as strictly analogous to those of Galvanism as the difference and the continual changes of organic life of the subjects make possible. The only position asserted by Magnetists as Magnetists (and independent of all particular theory, or explanation) as is most evident from its being held in common without the least shade of variation in their facts, in those statements of which their facts are mere generalization, (even as Gravitation in the first and purest sense of the word as solicitiously determined by Sir I. Newton, expressed as a general Term the aggregate of effects—namely, that all Bodies tend to their centers in the direct proportion of their relative masses) the only position, I say, asserted by all Magnetists as Magnetists, is, that the will or (if you prefer it as even less theoric) the vis vitæ of Man is not confined in its operations to the Organic Body, in which it appears to be seated; but under certain previously defined Conditions of distance and position, and above all of the relation of the Patient to the Agent and of the Agent to the Patient, is capable of acting and producing certain pre-defined Effects on the living human bodies external to it.—Thus, the Gymnotus Electricus, and Two other Fishes, possess a power of acting on bodies at a distance. In them it is true, the power is given to them merely for self-defence and likewise an organic apparatus has been discovered—but these differences are no more than what might have been certainly and securely anticipated from universal analogy.
Every power which man has in common with the Insects, the Bees for instance, is subjected to his Will, and capable of voluntary application—the very faculty of continuing his species in projective reproduction is in his instance only entrusted in a great measure to his Will.—Again no man has yet discovered any organic apparatus for Thought, Passion, Volition—we have discovered the Instrument set in action by them, but not the specific organs—but simply this, that in some way or other the whole nervous system is the organ.—What then is asked of any man? To believe? No! but merely to review the mass of evidence supplied by every variety of witness, from almost every part of Europe—and to show if you can some instances in the past experience of Mankind, of Evidence so concurrent from so many quarters under such very marked and even hostile differences of the attestors themselves, in respect of Country, Religion, Philosophic Sect, Rank, Talent, and even of personal antipathies, in anything afterwards proved to be false. But even on this Ground no faith is demanded, nothing more than the admission that a position as analogous to many known facts of Animal Electricity and Galvanism as two series of facts can be, and so attested, should be put to the test of impartial examination. There is but one demand made—Viz. Try it yourself.
There are but three essential conditions—the first, that the patient should labor under some disturbance of Health. Secondly, that the agent should sincerely and humanely wish to relieve him, if it be in his power to do so—and lastly that he should to the utmost of his power fix his attention and devote his will to this one object. The external manipulations (the necessity of which is not yet demonstrated; but the expedience of which as a means of facilitating the act of attending is undeniable; were it only on the same principle that men play with their buttons, watch-chain, or take snuff when they are desirous of attending earnestly to any one object) the external manipulation is far less complex than what is required in the ordinary medical administration of Electricity.—To place yourself face to face with the patient—to lay your left hand on his right shoulder, and your right hand on his left shoulder, to move your hands down his arms to the tips of his fingers, then to hold his thumbs for a few moments, his right thumb between the thumb and forefinger or little finger of your left hand, and his left thumb in the same manner with your right hand—and having repeated this Process half a dozen times, then to draw your hand and arm in a sweep from his head downwards—and if he complain of any local pain, to touch the part repeatedly—and at all events, to draw your hand either with the flat palm, or with the fingers’ ends; from the Neck to the Abdomen, either by direct touch or at a distance of one or two inches. Doubtless, the manipulations vary with the case; and every magnetist is led by his own experience, one to prefer one plan, and one another, or to unite all at different times, such as alternating the sweep from the Head downwards by laying one hand on the person’s brow and another on his navel—or breathing on the part affected, as in the Eye, in cases of Amaurosis, in the cure of which Animal Magnetism has been found particularly successful—or flipping, as it were, the flat of the thumbs with the forefinger at the part—or the placing the one hand on the correspondent region of the back, while the other is employed on the gastric or abdominal region, and during all this no other state of mind is required than what you would think it your duty to produce in yourself, if you were trying over again an experiment (chemical) concerning which you entertained some doubts—as for instance, when Sir H. Davy repeated the experiments of Berzylius with regard to the metal of Barytes, or Mr. Brand Professor Clark’s experiments on the fusion of stones, earth, and metals, by Newman’s Blowpipe with the condensed Gases——
If it be said that Mesmer was a character who wanted to make his fortune by his secret and that he did so—first of all, he fairly revealed his whole secret to those who bought it, and of the hundred Gentlemen who paid him a hundred louis each, not one complained of having been deceived. Secondly, do you not give Dr. James’s powders? Was it not the case with Vaccination in the first year of its Introduction—in Germany and Italy? or are there none who get money by Medical Electricity and Galvanism? Besides, Mesmer and Mystery are now gone by forever—so far from any secret being made, the cases are published at present in all the respectable foreign Journals, medical and philosophical, as any other cases in Medicine and Physics. Even the sturdy Leader of the matter-of-fact Experimentalists, Gilbert, has at length admitted the subject into his annals, and he himself most reluctantly has been obliged to concede the facts. Nearly two years have passed since the Prussian and Austrian Governments have demanded a report on the subject from the Physicians and Eminent Naturalists of Berlin and Vienna, and the report of the French Committee under Dr. Franklin has been subjected to a careful revision, and declared partial. And yet has there arisen one man among all, who has detected falsehood or delusion! Not one …
Whence then comes this Incredulity? The English World are against it—and Peter disdains to listen to it because John thinks nothing of it—and John disdains it because Peter does so … It is sufficient that men of sense reject it—and who are men of sense?.… [Gaps left in the MS. for insertion of names of eminent scientists and physicians.] O No! they must be very weak men—they are converts to Animal Magnetism! Consequently there can be no competent evidences—the same sophism has been employed against the credibility of the Christian History—and admirably detected and exposed by Jortin and Lardner——
For myself, I shall even say—I will try it when I have the opportunity, myself—I will endeavour to see it tried by others, when I can—and till then I will be neutral—S. T. Coleridge, July 8th, 1817.
MS.
I am in the habit of making marginal observations on the books I read—a habit indulged by the partiality of my friends. For the last 20 years there is scarce a book so be-penned or be-penciled but some one or more instances will be found noticed by me of the power of the visual and its substitution for the conceptual. Yet I remember few more striking than the scornful and pertenacious disbelief of An[imal] Mag[netism] compared with the eager belief of Electricity—the main cause of this difference being, I am persuaded, this only, that the latter exhibited a flash of Light.
MS.
S. T. C.’s Judgement after a careful and unbiassed Perusal of this Book. [Kluge on Animal Magnetism.]
Allowing the least possible to Fancy and Exaggeration, I can yet find nothing in the Cases collected by Dr. Kluge that requires any other conclusion but this—that under certain conditions one human Being may so *act on the body as well as on the mind of another—as to produce a morbid sleep, from which the Brain awakes, while the organs of sense remain in stupor. I speak exclusively of the intellectual phaenomena of An[imal] Mag[netism]. That the same vis ab extra may act medically, there is no reason to doubt—any more than of the effects of opium. Thus the modus agendi in the first instance, the instrument thro’ which the Magnetiser operates, is the only mystery: and on this neither Kluge nor any of his Predecessors have thrown a ray of Light. Their Somato – or, brevitatis et euphoniœ caus↠Somo-sphere is a mere translation of the Fact into an unmeaning Image. It is but the substitution of the word, Fluid, for Dr. Reil or Dr. Kluge. S. T. C.
MS.
Before the Art of Healing can be made a matter of Common Sense, the Common Sense must have been itself enlightened by the Conclusions of Science and the Results of Experience and experimental Philosophy.
MS.
‘The possible effect on the imagination, from an idea violently and suddenly impressed on it.’
I had been reading Bryan Edwards’s account of the effects of the Oby witchcraft on the Negroes in the West Indies, and Hearne’s deeply interesting anecdotes of similar workings on the imagination of the Copper Indians (those of my readers who have it in their power will be well repaid for the trouble of referring to those works for the passages alluded to); and I conceived the design of shewing that instances of this kind are not peculiar to savage or barbarous tribes, and of illustrating the mode in which the mind is affected in these cases, and the progress and symptoms of the morbid action on the fancy from the beginning.
Preface to The Three Graves.
I have long wished to devote an entire work to the subject of dreams, visions, ghosts, and witchcraft, in which I might first give, and then endeavour to explain, the most interesting and best attested fact of each, which has come within my knowledge, either from books or from personal testimony. I might then explain in a more satisfactory way the mode in which our thoughts, in states of morbid slumber, become at times perfectly dramatic, (for in certain sorts of dreams the dullest wight becomes a Shakespear) and by what law the form of the vision appears to talk to us its own thoughts in a voice as audible as the shape is visible; and this too oftentimes in connected trains, and not seldom even with a concentration of power which may easily impose on the soundest judgments, uninstructed in the optics and acoustics of the inner sense, for revelations and gifts of prescience. In aid of the present case, I will only remark, that it would appear incredible to persons not accustomed to these subtle notices of self-observation, what small and remote resemblances, what mere hints of likeness from some real external object, especially if the shape be aided by colour, will suffice to make a vivid thought consubstantiate with the real object, and derive from it an outward perceptibility. Even when we are broad awake, if we are in anxious expectation, how often will not the most confused sounds of nature be heard by us as articulate sounds? For instance, the babbling of a brook will appear for a moment the voice of a friend, for whom we are waiting, calling out our own names &c. A short meditation, therefore, on the great law of the imagination, that a likeness in part tends to become a likeness of the whole, will make it not only conceivable but probable, that the inkstand itself, and the dark-coloured stone on the wall, which Luther perhaps had never till then noticed, might have a considerable influence in the production of the fiend, and of the hostile act by which his obtrusive visit was repelled.
A lady once asked me if I believed in ghosts and apparitions. I answered with truth and simplicity: No, madam! I have seen far too many myself I have indeed a whole memorandum book filled with records of these phaenomena, many of them interesting as facts and data for psychology, and affording some valuable materials for a theory of perception and its dependence on the memory and imagination. ‘In omnem actum perceptionis imaginatio influit efficienter.’—Wolff.
Friend.
‘It is indisputable that nervous excitation is contagious. The greater part of ghost stories may be traced to this source’
Allsop.
It is a most instructive part of my Life the fact, that I have been always preyed on by some Dread, and perhaps all my faulty actions have been the consequence of some Dread or other on my mind, from fear of Pain, or Shame, not from prospect of Pleasure. So in my childhood and Boyhood the horror of being detected with a sorehead; afterwards imaginary fears of having the Itch in my Blood. Then a short-lived Fit of Fears from sex, then horror of Duns, and a state of struggling with madness from an incapability of hoping that I should be able to marry Mary Evans (and this strange passion of fervent tho’ wholly imaginative and imaginary Love uncombinable by my utmost efforts with any regular Hope—possibly from deficiency of bodily feeling, of tactual ideas connected with the image) had all the effects of direct Fear, and I have lain for hours together awake at night, groaning and praying. Then came that stormy time, and for a few months America really inspired Hope, and I became an exalted Being. Then came Rob. Southey’s alienation, my marriage, constant dread in my mind respecting Mrs Coleridge’s Temper, &c.—And finally stimulants in the fear and prevention of violent Bowel-attacks from mental agitation; then almost epileptic night-horrors in my sleep, and since then every error I have committed, has been the immediate effect of the Dread of these bad most shocking Dreams—any thing to prevent them—all this interwoven with its minor consequences that fill up the interspaces—the cherry juice running in between the cherries in a cherry pie. Procrastination in dread of this—and something else in consequence of that procrast[ination] &c. And from the same cause the least languor expressed in a Letter from S. H. drives me wild, and it is most unfortunate that I so fearfully despondent should have concentered my soul thus on one almost as feeble in Hope as myself. 11 Jan. 1805.
MS.
A shadow, that which subsists in shaped and definite Nonentity. It has often suggested to me the fancy of a Planet without any common atmosphere, but when each Individual has an atmosphere of his own, like a travel-warmed Horse in a winter morning; to receive and communicate, one joins his atmosphere to that of another, and according to the symp[athy] or antipathy of their nature, the refractions and aberrations are less or greater—their Thoughts more or less reciprocally intelligible.
MS.
John Webster in The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, 1677, refers to ‘the effects of healing by the Weapon-salve, the sympathetic Powder, the curing of divers Diseases by Appensions, Amulets, or by Transplantation, and many other most admirable effects both of Art and Nature’.
Coleridge comments: Webster’s Belief will be thought by the Learned, yea and by the Unlearned, and above all by the numberless Half-learned of the present day, not less senseless and superstitious, than the Witch-monger Creed which he opposes. I dare confess myself of a different opinion, as far at least, as that I accede to the distinction of Physics into mechanical or mediate, and magical or immediate, agency—not unlike the difference between conducted and radiant Heat. By ‘immediate’ I do not exclude the possibility of an Intermediate; but mean only that the effect passes from a to b without any known tangible, visible, or ponderable inter-agent. Thus the Act of the Will on the nerves and muscles of my Arm and Fingers I call ‘magical’ in the original and unsuperstitious use of the term. S. T. Coleridge, 27 Octr. 1819.
MS.
Webster relates a story from Johannes Baptiste Porta, ‘a great Naturalist and a person of competent veracity’, of a witch who was observed to anoint herself with an ointment that put her into a deep sleep in which she apparently dreamed of journeys and adventures which she reported, when she woke up, as having really taken place.
Coleridge comments: This of Porta’s is not the only well-attested instance of the use, and of the Cataleptic properties of, narcotic Ointments and Potions in the Pharmacy of the poor Self-bewitched. They are a traditional Derivative from Pagan Antiquity (Pocula Circëia &c.) and even in the earliest mention of them seem, like most superstitions, to be the cadaver et putrimenta of a defunct Natural Philosophy. In many respects the voluntary confessions of Witches would lead one to suppose that an empirical Animal Magnetism was in play; but there is this characteristic difference that the magnetized Cataleptic retain no memory of what they said and imagined during their trance.
Might this difference arise from the Witches remaining unquestioned and unroused, unexcited ab et ad extra during the magnetic torpor? Or by the continuance and Sequelœ of the Narcotic Influence, so as not to afford any chasm, or abrupt transition into the waking and natural state? That Self-magnetism is in certain conditions, those indeed of the rarest occurrence, possible, has been rendered highly probable, at least. The cases of Behmen, Helmont, Swedenborg, and the assertions of Philo Judæus of himself, and Porphyry both of Plotinus and of himself, might at all events receive a natural solution from the hypothesis. Indeed, the best service which the Mesmerism or Zoomagnetism has yet done is that it enables us to explain the Oracles and a score other superstitions without recourse either to downright self-conscious Lying and Imposture on the one side, or to the Devil and his Works on the other—reducing the whole of Dæmonology and Diabolography to Neuropathology. S. T. C.
MS.
Being called in to another female demoniac at Kingswood, he set out on horseback. It rained heavily, and the woman, when he was three miles off, cried out, ‘Yonder comes Wesley, galloping as fast as he can;’ a circumstance which it certainly required no aid from the devil to foresee.
Southey, The Life of Wesley, I. 215.
Coleridge comments: A sufficient solution, as far as this particular case is concerned. But the coincidence throughout of all these Methodist cases with those of the Magnetists, makes one wish a solution that would apply to all: now this sense, or appearance of a sense of the distant, both in time and space, is common to almost all the Magnetic patients, in Denmark, Germany, France and North Italy—to many of which the same, or a similar solution could not apply. Likewise, many have been recorded at the same time in different countries by men who had never heard of each other’s names, and where the simultaneity of publication proves the independence of the testimony—and among the Magnetizers and Attesters are to be found names of men, whose competence in respect of integrity and incapability of intentional falsehood is fully equal to Wesley’s, and their competence in respect of physic, and psychological insight and attainments incomparably greater. Who would dream, indeed, of comparing Wesley with a Cuvier, Hufeland, Blumenbach, Eschenmeyer, Reil, etc.? Were I asked what I think—my answer would be—that the evidence enforces Scepticism, and a non liquet. Too strong and consentaneous for a candid mind to be satisfied of its falsehood, or its solvability on the supposition of imposture, or casual coincidence—too fugacious and infixable to support any theory that supposes the always potential, and under certain conditions and circumstances, occasionally actual existence of a correspondent faculty in the human soul. And nothing less than such an hypothesis would be adequate, to the satisfactory explanation of the facts—though that of a metastasis of specific functions of the nervous energy taken in conjunction with extreme nervous excitement, +some delusion, +some illusion, +some imposition, +some chances, and accidental coincidences might determine the direction in which the Scepticism vibrated. Nine years has the subject of Zoo-magnetism been before me. I have traced it historically—collected a mass of documents in French, German, Italian, and the Latinists of the 16th century—have never neglected an opportunity of questioning eye-witnesses, (ex. gr. Tieck, Treviranus, De Prati, Meyer, and others of literary or medical celebrity,) and I remain where I was, and where the first perusal of Kluge’s work had left me, without having advanced an inch backward or forward. Treviranus, the famous botanist’s reply to me, when he was in London, is worth recording. Ich habe gesehen was (ich weiss das) ich nicht würde geglaubt haben auf Ihre Erzählung, etc. ‘I have seen what I am certain I would not have believed on your telling; and in all reason, therefore, I can neither expect nor wish that you should believe on mine.’—S. T. C.
I have not expressed myself as clearly as I could wish. But the truth of the assertion, that deep feeling has a tendency to combine with obscure ideas, in preference to distinct and clear notions, may be proved by the history of fanatics and fanaticism in all ages and countries. The odium theologicum is even proverbial: and it is the common complaint of philosophers and philosophic historians, that the passions of the disputants are commonly violent in proportion to the subtlety and obscurity of the questions in dispute.
Friend.
Could we emancipate ourselves from the be-dimming influence of custom, and the transforming witchcraft of early associations, we should see as numerous tribes of fetish-worshippers in the streets of London and Paris, as we hear of on the coasts of Africa.
Friend.
De Boyer describes a seventeen-year-old girl in a madhouse, born blind, deaf and dumb, and in the class we should now designate by the term idiot, in its technical use: unable to keep clothing on, to walk, or co-ordinate activity in any way.
Coleridge comments: This Girl was evidently not merely blind, deaf and dumb, but had some disease of the Brain or nervous system which made the Body no fit instrument of the development of the Understanding. This disease was the cause of the Blindness, &c. &c., for others have been known, whose loss being confined to the Senses, have been instructed and humanized. Let a being born blind, deaf and dumb, yet otherwise healthy, be transplanted to a race of intelligent men who had formed a language of Smell and Touch, and be educated among them.
MS.
In the year 1813 I reperuse this dreadful Case, [of a poor and starving weaver, who went mad and attributed his state to the bite of a mad dog twelve years before] communicated to me by Dr. Beddoes—and my humble opinion is, that excessive Distress of Mind and in a less degree, but yet important, the abstraction of needful Stimulation, had, the first called into activity a lurking Poison, and the second deadened those vires naturae medicatrices which under happier circumstances would have subdued and quieted it. It only confirms a fearful conjecture of mine, of 20 years standing, that no Disease was ever yet cured, but merely suspended if of the Nature of Poison. Ex. gr. I believe, no one who has had the Small Pox, Measles, &c. is as secure in Health, as they would have been, if that Poison had not been absorbed. Good Heavens! if this should be true, what an additional argument for the Vaccine Inoculation! as the Dreams, like a Cathartic, of evacuating, first the Small Pox, and then itself. S. T. Coleridge. 7 Feby. 1813.
71 Berners’ Street, London.
MS.
OF STATES IN WHICH THE WILL IS THE PREDOMINANT FACTOR: A MEDITATION BY EΣTHΣE
I am inclined to think that the Beginning and the End of all modes, states, and affectments of Being, in which the Will is principally concerned, are abrupt, and by a Vault, as it were. Thus, Liking, Regard, Esteem, are continuous; and the Increase is so gradual as not to destroy the continuity. It is a1 a2 a3 a4. Liking in the highest degree never becomes Love. All in a moment Love starts up or leaps in, and takes place of Liking. And even so it is, I suspect, with Alienation. There is a sudden Death of Love, or as sudden a Translation.… The Dislikes pretended as the Cause are evermore posthumous; and the Reasons for the Dislike invented or at best recollected, in order to pacify the Deserter’s own Conscience. In some cases there is no Dislike either before or after. Nay, it may even happen that the Esteem, the Kindness, the Attachment may become stronger. But still the Love is gone. Unlike the Nightingale, it may leave the Second Perch, but it never returns to the first. Most commonly, it dies altogether.
The same insulated moment, as the expression in time of an act out of time—for there are Acts and forms of Being as alien and heterogeneous to Time, as our Thoughts, Affections and Passions are to Space*—the same instantaneity I find in the revolutions of Religion and of Moral Conduct. Not St. Paul alone was baptized with Fire—even the Fire-flash of Lightning. We rise from the death of Sin as from the death of the Grave ‘in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye’. And (as all religious errors that infect many minds, are grounded on Half or Quarter Truths) this is the base of the fanatical notions about Sudden Conversions.
MS.
Soother of Absence. Days and weeks and months pass on, and now a year; and the Sun, the Sea, the Breeze has its influence on me, and good and sensible men—and I feel a pleasure upon me, and I am to the outward view of all cheerful, and have myself no distinct consciousness of the contrary; for I use my faculties, not indeed as once, but yet freely. But oh Sara! I am never happy, never deeply gladdened. I know not, I have forgotten, what the Joy is of which the Heart is full as of a deep and quiet fountain overflowing insensibly, or the gladness of Joy, when the fountain overflows ebullient. S. T. C.
MS.
[O Asra! crossed out] the strongest antagonist, and at the same time the only Perpetuator of Desire is true Love: and what is Love, but to have my enjoyments depend on yours, one being to that of the other reciprocally cause and effect. I am miserable indeed, if you are unhappy, whatever the cause may be; but yet I cannot but be discontented, even when you are happy, unless I have been in part at least, the means and object of your happiness. O if Love (Love in its [best crossed out] own form the fairest Child and tenderest Nurse of Virtue) O! if Love [authorized crossed out] sanctioned Desire (or rather, as the rising Sun shoots thro’ and saturates with rich light the Cloud that veils it, took up and transfigured Desire into its own Being) then, then I should appear as such as I should always be—with the genial warmth of Life, not the Heat of Fever, with the tranquil Vigor of Affection fed by Affection, not the paroxysms of Passion disquieted into Appetite by Fear of Transiency, and the uncertainty as to a correspondent attachment. O be assured, that it is for a secure and prosperous Love only to be always unmixed and quiet. S. T. C.
MS.
My dear Green,
One of the many mysteries of Human Nature, of which as inferior to many yet as good as most I take my own to be a pretty fair average, is: the increasing desire of Repose as we grow older, and yet an involuntary Repining at the very events and changes of feeling, which we need only resign ourselves to, to be in possession of the very Repose and wishless Tranquillity, for which we had been sighing. I would fain be independent of any Will that is not one and the same with Reason. I would fain live the short remainder of my Life for God and Universal Interests, and yet I find myself tenaciously clinging to the shadows of past [unfinished fragment].
Turn of mind into melancholy and frequent madness and extravagance from the Turn of Life—the top of the Hill—at 35 to 40,—different in different men——
MS.
O that perilous moment (for such there is) of a half-reconciliation, when the Coldness and the Resentment have been sustained too long! Each is drawing toward the other—but like Glass in the mid-state between fusion and compaction a single sand will splitter it.
MS.
INTRODUCTORY PARAGRAPH
Action and Passion, says Descartes, are the same thing contemplated as existing in two [reciprocally opposed crossed out] opposite yet corresponding Subjects: and derive their difference from the different relations of the Subjects. An Action in the Mind is a Passion in the Body: and Actions of the Body are reflected as Passions in the Mind. This, however, is a mere logical antithesis of our Thoughts—or lower still—a grammatical Antithesis of the Terms, Action and Passion, substituted for a real definition of the Things themselves. That Descartes intended it for such—that it passed for a real definition with him—was not owing to any want of logical acumen in this great man, nor even of philosophic Vision; but must be attributed to the influence of a favourite Dogma on his mind viz. the contrariety of Soul and Body, as Subjects absolutely heterogeneous, each partially definable by negativing the properties of the other. This Hypothesis, by him first asserted in its absoluteness, infected the whole mass of his opinions, physical and metaphysical, and is, in fact, the distinguishing and fundamental Principle of the Cartesian Philosophy.…
With the Ancients, and with such of the Modern Philosophers before Descartes, as had ventured to propose the question to themselves, Soul and Body were considered as the correspondent Opposites, the Positive and Negative Poles as it were, of which the Man was the Unity. It would lead us too far from our subject, to state the various causes that conspired to procure so ready an admission and so rapid an extension to the new doctrine, of the French philosopher,* according to which Soul and Body are utterly diverse, with no property in common, nay, the constituent attitudes of each incompatible with the essential nature of the other. Suffice it to observe, that the influence of this [notion crossed out] Dogma may be traced in sundry opinions, that have survived the School from which they sprung, and have even established themselves, as current phrases, in the different Languages of Europe. Less [obviously crossed out] glaringly repugnant to Common Sense, than the Hypothesis of the pre-established† Harmony, i.e. Correspondence of two alien and independent Subjects by the pre-adjustment of their common Creator—which was the first and most obvious inference from the Cartesian Dogma, but for this very reason, more injurious. To enumerate all the mischievous yet legitimate consequences of this utter diversity of Soul and Body, or all the effects of its having passed into a general Belief, would swell an introductory paragraph into a volume. But that the assertion has not been made without grounds, it will be sufficient to instance: I. the separation of Psychology from Physiology, depriving the former of all root and objective truth, and reducing the latter to a mere enumeration of facts and phaenomena without copula or living form: II. the gloomy and hopeless opinions concerning Insanity, with the comparatively low state and the empirical character of the Practice in this department which one might fancy to have been thrown off, as a Slough, from the living and waxing Body of Medical Science, or dropt, like a Shed Horn, for Mad-doctors and Madhouse-keepers to make a noise with; and III. in close connection with the IInd, tho’ of less immediate importance, the exquisite Superficiality, and commonplace moral-essay character of our numerous French, Scotch and English, great and small, Treatises on the Passions.
Primary sense of the word, from pati 
agere, to undergo to act upon. Passion, a state of undergoing. If the word were to be understood in the full extent of its Etymon, the Passions would include every impression made on the Brain and Nerves by external agents or by the Body itself. I need not say that this is not our present use of the word: nor are these impresses, whether black and blue from a Horse-whip, or of all colours from the impinging of Light, or of no colour from the pulses of Air, the subjects of this inquiry into the nature and number of the Passions, instituted for the purpose of satisfying my own and my dear Fellow-students’ mind by the formation of somewhat clearer and more distinct conceptions than we have hitherto derived from Books.
Definition of the Word as now used.
Here, however, it may not be amiss to remark, that with the single exception of Geometry a Definition as distinguished from a mere verbal explanation [should] find its proper place at the end of a Treatise, and as the Result of the Investigation. And this general Rule is particularly applicable to the Subject in question: for the reasons stated in the concluding sentences of our introductory Paragraph. By a definition therefore we mean no more in the present instance than such an explanation of the word as may suffice to designate the subject and mark the limits of our inquiry. Even for this purpose I find it easier to reject the definitions hitherto given than to provide a substitute. The following is the best that has occurred to me: and if no better strikes you, take it on tryal.
By the Passions generally, and described therefore by their generic or common character, we mean—a state of emotion, which tho’ it may have its pre-disposing cause in the Body, and its occasion in external Incidents or Appearances, is yet not immediately produced by the, incidents themselves, but by the person’s Thoughts and Reflections concerning them. Or more briefly: A Passion is a state of emotion, having its immediate cause not in Things, but in our Thoughts of the Things—or—A Passion is a state of emotion which, whatever its object or occasion may be, in ourselves or out of ourselves, has its proper and immediate cause not in this, but in our Thoughts respecting it.…
… Pain not a pure antithesis to Pleasure; because a total Pain is not possible. Pain a [general conception crossed out] mental generalization—a word; but a total Pleasure may have a real existence.…
… Tho’ Rage is in many cases a Revulsion of Fear, and tho’ (if I may borrow the words of the Poet Coleridge—see the poem entitled ‘Mad Ox’ in the Sibylline Leaves)
Should you a Rat to madness teize,
Why even a Rat might plague ye—
There’s no Philosopher but sees,
That Fear and Rage are one Disease:
Tho’ this may burn and that may freeze,
They’re both alike the Ague—
tho’ I say Rage and Fear are not seldom seen as the Cold and Hot Fit of the same Fever—yet and notwithstanding, I am strongly inclined to consider Fear as an [a accident crossed out, product crossed out] affection of the Reproductive or first and lowest Function of Life (vis vitæ vegeta) and an accident of the assimilative and digestive system—and that the disturbance of the musculo-arterial system is but a consequence—and of the Digestive System I should think the Bowels, and abdominal nerves the principal seat. Mem. the timidity of the herbivorous animals…
… Fear is cruel and when anger puts on the outward marks of Fear, we are shocked and expect no good from so unnatural a combination. There is always a ground of Fear in premeditative Revenge…
… Joy and Grief, Hope and Fear, &c. have slipt out their collars, and no longer run in couples, under my whipping-in or from the kennel of my Psycho-somatic Ology.…
… This experiment [his own attempt to systematize his argument] is a miss… And not only a failure—but an impropriety, and an oversight was the introduction of self-impulsions that are merely corporeal, (
, [possibly 
?] 
) and never arrive at Consciousness—psilosomatic, and not, as ought alone to have been mentioned, the psycho-somatic or psycho-zöic…
… Lastly I take the Mind (
) and endeavour to refer the remaining Passions to the influence of the Mind… whether excited by any of the former Passions, or by outward Agency, or by its own judgement or fancy, on the sensibility…
… The Final Cause, and the right Discipline of the Passions, whether by control, or prevention, or suppression…, This is the Plan. Now then for the execution.…
… The wanting, the craving of Grief (Here quote from Shakespeare’s Constance in King John and from the Greek Tragedians—and in all the Passions I purpose to make free use of illustrations from the Poets—especially Dante, Chaucer, Shakespear and Ben Jonson) the characteristic supersession of the Appetite of Hunger—the equally characteristic wasting and marasmus of Grief—all these and there are many more, prove Grief to be a Hunger of the Soul.
Tuesday 19 Octr 1830——
‘As if their whole vocation
Were endless imitation.’
Two things we may learn from little children from 3 to 6 years old—I. that it is a character, an instinct of our human Nature, to pass out of our self—i.e. the image (or complex cycle of images) on which act and sensation that by its constant presence and rapidity becomes a stationary Unity, a whole of indistinguishable parts, and is the perpetual representative of our Individuum, and hence by all unreflecting Minds confounded and identified with it. Mem. On this equivocque or double meaning of Self is grounded the Sophism of the Rochefoucauld System. All acts proceed from Self (here Self means the Principium Individualitatis) therefore all acts proceed to Self (here Self means the representative Image). Well! to return—with a Da Capo——
The first lesson, that innocent Childhood affords me, is—that it is an instinct of my Nature to pass out of myself, and to exist in the form of others.
The second is—not to suffer any one form to pass into me and to become a usurping Self in the disguise of what the German Pathologists call a fixed Idea. Mem. This is always a Self-love—tho’ the Conscience may be duped by the alterity and consequent distinct figurableness of the form—. As sure as it is cyclical, and forms the ruling Eddy in our mind, so surely does it become the representative of our Self, and = Self.
Our best loves and solicitudes may be in excess, and assuredly are so when they are exclusively confined to one Object, or so attached as to distract from the love and care due to others, even [as] the anxious Love of a Mother for a favorite Child. The only exception is the Love of God—because the Love of God alone is inclusive of all good and Lovely, and excludes nothing but the Lust of Evil, the Solicitude after emptiness.