THE finest edge, into which the meditative mind of a Contemplator was ever ground, is but the back of the Blade in comparison with the Subtlety of Nature....
MS.
INSECT. 
1. In the plant each part is capable of passing by metamorphosis, progressive and retrogressive, into every other—while yet each remaining bears or supports the higher, the root bearing the stem, the stem the leaves, all the calyx and flower. In the insect each antecedent form makes way for the higher—and perishes in giving it birth; the Egg is sacrificed that the Larva may appear, and the Imago, or mature Insect, takes place of the Larva.
2. The Plant is the nuptial Garland of Earth and Air—their equation of Carbon, Oxygen and Hydrogen. Or as Carbon as the negative factor of Life is common to all the realms of organic Nature, we may better call the Vegetable Tribe the equation of Oxygen and Hydrogen—not the neutralization, which is water, and therefore the product of a quantitative combination: but the potenziation, or endlessly varied proportions eliciting the inner spirit of the two Gases by communication of qualities.—Now as in powers the three great Co-efficients of Nature are Gravity and Light with Warmth, as the Indifference, so in bodies, which necessarily contain, each body all three, yet under the predominance of some one, Carbon most represents Gravity, Oxygen Light, and Hydrogen Warmth.
3. Accordingly, in the Flower, the Crown of mature vegetative life, we have the qualitative product of Oxygen=Light in the outness and splendor of Colors, the qualit[ative] prod[uct] of Hydrogen=Warmth in the inwardness and sweetness of Fragrance. All offering that is truly sacrificial, i.e. hallowing, sanctifying, proceeds from and is preceded by and the act of a Yearning, desiderium. 
, 
—what will not the Mother sacrifice when her bowels are yearning for her children. And this constitutes the diversity of Yearning and desire, 
. Yearning offers up, resigns itself—passes wholly into another. Desire [catches crossed out] seizes hold of, draws to itself, devours, ravishes—and in its fiercest form (ex. gr. See a hornet devouring a peach thro’ a magnifying glass) ravages. Hence in all ages, incense, fragrant steams, have been the accompaniments of Sacrifice. Likewise of gentle Love. (Song of Sol[omon] 1.12.13.14—and II. 1. I am the Rose of Sharon, and the Lily of the Valley. III. 6.)
4. The insect is the incarnation of the dissepent [dissepiment?] contractive corrosive power of the Air—the minister of the Antipathy of Air to Earth—Here too therefore we must expect the qualit[ative] product of Oxygen in splendor of colors—but the Warmth becomes external, thermometrical—and the odor either none, or putroid, and marking the ascendancy of a new ingredient, Nitrogen—not unknown indeed in the vegetable world but yet known only as an alien, an antedated Animal in the gluten of Wheat, which is almost an artefact of man and animal manures. As the Plant of Love, Yearning and Sacrifice, so is the Insect the Symbol of [Lust crossed out] Appetite, Desire—Lust hard by hate. Manifold motions making little speed. And to deform and kill the things whereon they feed.
5. The Plant rests in the products. Its branches, leaves, flowers, seeds, are so many successive Sabbaths The Insects’ products are all working tools, or warnings and wakings to restless activity. The Insect is a Shop of Tools.
6. Yet at length both join, the 
(Plant) and the 
(Insect) in the submissive love of the female—and with the victory of the former in the 
—the hatching and brooding are vegetable processes—and the Bird the Union of Plant and Insect, each glorified by the interpenetration and by the potenziation of ascending intensity of Life. Hence the feathery vegetation of the Birds—the rich colors and a substitute for the fragrancy of the Plants. For as the Bird is the symbol of Air in its emancipation from water, and therefore the continuous and dilative Hydrogen must give way to the contractive distinctive Oxygen, and to the volatile self-projecting dispersive Nitrogen, the Carbon (the Repres[entative] of Gravity) becomes the mediator—we have Light in the form (under the power) of Gravity in Color, and Gravity sub forma et ditione Lucis sub ditione. In Sounds and sweet yearning varied by quiet provoking challenging sounds are the surrogates of the Vegetable Odors—and like these, are the celebrations of the Nuptial moments, the hours of Love. Music is to Fragrance, as Air to Water. Milton’s Comus.
7. The Child, Poesy, finds a fall, a degradation, in the Mammalia.
MS.
FROM SARA HUTCHINSON’S TRANSCRIPT AND NOTEBOOK 2.
Wed, Afternoon 1/2 past 3, Augt4th 1802—
Wastdale, a mile and a half below the Foot of the Lake, at an Alehouse without a Sign, 20 strides from the Door, under the Shade of a huge Sycamore Tree, without my coat—but that I will now put on, in prudence—yes here I am and have been for something more than an hour, and have enjoyed a good Dish of Tea. I carried my Tea and sugar with me, under this delightful Tree. In the House there are only an old feeble Woman, and a ‘Tallyeur’ Lad upon the Table—all the rest of the Wastdale World is a haymaking, rejoicing and thanking God for this first downright summer Day that we have had since the beginning of May. On Sunday Augt. Ist 1/2 after 12, I had a Shirt, cravat, 2 pair of Stockings, a little paper and half a dozen Pens, a German Book (Voss’s Poems) and a little Tea and Sugar, with my Night Cap, packed up in my natty green oil-skin, neatly squared, and put into my net knapsack, and the knap-sack on my back and the Besom stick in my hand (which for want of a better, and in spite of Mrs C. and Mary, who both raised their voices against it, especially as I left the Besom scattered on the Kitchen Floor) off I sallied—over the Bridge, thro’ the hop-Field, thro’ the Prospect Bridge at Portinscale, so on by the tall Birch that grows out of the center of the huge Oak, along into Newlands. Newlands is indeed a lovely Place—the houses, each in it’s little Shelter of Ashes and Sycamores, just under the Road, so that in some places you might leap down on the Roof, seemingly at least—the exceeding greeness and pastoral beauty of the Vale itself, with the savage wildness of the Mountains, their coves, and long arm-shaped and elbow-shaped Ridges—yet this wildness softened down into a congruity with the Vale by the semicircular Lines of the Crags, and of the bason-like Concavities. The Cataract between Newlands and Kescadale had but little water in it, of course, was of no particular Interest. I passed on thro’ the green steep smooth bare Kescadale, a sort of unfurnished Passage or antechamber between Newlands and Buttermere, came out on Buttermere and drank Tea at the little Inn, and read the greater part of the Revelations—the only part of the New Testament, which the Scotch Cobbler read—because why? Because it was the only part that he understood. O ’twas a wise Cobbler!
Conceive an enormous round Bason mountain-high of solid Stone, cracked in half and one half gone; exactly in the remaining half of this enormous Bason, does Buttermere lie, in this beautiful and stern Embracement of Rock. I left it, passed by Scale Force, the white downfall of which glimmered thro’ the Trees that hang before it like bushy Hair over a Madman’s Eyes, and climbed ’till I gained the first Level. Here it was ‘every man his own path-maker’, and I went directly cross it—upon soft mossy Ground, with many a hop, skip, and jump, and many an occasion for observing the truth of the old saying, ‘where Rushes grow, A Man may go’. Red Pike, a dolphinshaped Peak of a deep red, looked in upon me from over the Fell on my Left; on my right I had, first Melbreak (the Mountain on the right of Crummock, as you ascend the Lake) then a Vale running down with a pretty Stream in it, to Loweswater, then Heck Comb, a Fell of the same height and running in the same direction with Melbreak, a Vale on the other side too, and at the bottom of both these Vales the Loweswater Fells running abreast. Again I reached an ascent, climbed up, and came to a ruined Sheep-fold—a wild green view all around me, bleating of Sheep and noise of Waters. I sate there near 20 minutes, the Sun setting on the Hill behind with a soft watery gleam; and in front of me the upper Halves of huge deep-furrowed Grasmere (the mountain on the other side of Crummock) and the huge Newland and Buttermere Mountains, and peeping in from behind, the Top of Saddleback. Two Fields were visible, the highest cultivated Ground on the Newland side of Buttermere, and the Trees in those Fields were the only Trees visible in the whole prospect.
I left the Sheepfold with regret—for of all things a ruined Sheepfold in a desolate place is the dearest to me, and fills me most with Dreams and Visions and tender thoughts of those I love best.
Well! I passed a bulging roundish-headed green Hill to my Left, (and to the left of it was a frightful crag) with a very high round-head right before me; this latter is called Ennerdale-Dodd, and bisects the ridge between Ennerdale and Buttermere and Crummock. I took it on my right hand, and came to the top of the bulging green Hill, on which I found a small Tarn, called Flatern [?Floutern] Tarn, about 100 yds. in length, and not more than 7 or 8 in breadth, but O! what a grand Precipice it lay at the foot of! The half of this Precipice (called Herd-house) nearest to Ennerdale was black, with green mosscushions on the Ledges; the half nearest to Buttermere a pale pink, and divided from the black part by a great streamy Torrent of crimson Shiver, and Screes, or Skilly (as they call it). I never saw a more heart-raising Scene. I turned and looked on the Scene which I had left behind, a marvellous group of Mountains, wonderfully and admirably arranged—not a single minute object to interrupt the oneness of the view, excepting those two green Fields in Buttermere—but before me the glorious Sea with the high Coast and Mountains of the Isle of Man, perfectly distinct—and three Ships in view. A little further on, the Lake of Ennerdale (the lower part of it) came in view, shaped like a clumsy battle-dore—but it is, in reality, exactly fiddleshaped. The further Bank of the higher part, steep, lofty, bare bulging Crags; the nether Bank green and pastoral, with Houses in the shelter of their own dear Trees. On the opposite Shore in the middle and narrow part of the Lake there bulges out a huge Crag called Angling Stone, being a famous Station for Anglers—and the reflection of this Crag in the Water is admirable—pillars or rather it looks like the pipes of some enormous Organ in a rich golden Color.
I travelled on to Long Moor, two miles below the foot of the Lake, and met a very hearty welcome from John Ponsonby, a Friend of Mr. Jackson’s—here I stayed the night, and the greater part of Monday—the old Man went to the head of the Lake with me. The mountains at the head of this Lake and Wast-dale are the Monsters of the Country, bare bleak Heads, evermore doing deeds of Darkness, weather-plots, and storm-conspiracies in the Clouds. Their names are Herdhouse, Bowness, Wha Head, Great Gavel, the Steeple, the Pillar, and Seat Allian.
I left Long Moor after Tea, and proceeded to Egremont, 5 miles—thro’ a very pleasant Country, part of the way by the River Enner, with well wooded Banks, and nice green Fields, and pretty houses with Trees, and two huge Sail-cloth Manufactories. Went to Girtskill, a mercer, for whom I had a Letter, but he was at Workington, so I walked on to St. Bees, 3 miles from Egremont. When I came there could not get a Bed—at last got an apology for one, at a miserable Pot-house; slept or rather dozed, in my Clothes—breakfasted there—and went to the School and Church ruins. Had read in the history of Cumb[erlan]d that there was an ‘excellent Library presented to the School by Sr James Lowther’, which proved to be some 30 odd Volumes of Commentaries on the Scripture utterly worthless, and which with all my passion for ragged old Folios I should certainly make serviceable for fire-lighting. Men who write Tours and County Histories I have by woeful experience found out to be damned Liars, harsh words, but true! It was a wet woeful oppressive Morning. I was sore with my bad night. Walked down to the Beach, which is a very nice hard Sand for more than a Mile, but the St Bees Head which I had read much of as a noble Cliff, might be made a song of on the Flats of the Dutch Coast—but in England ‘twill scarcely bear a looking-at. Returned to Egremont, a miserable walk, dined there, visited the Castle, the Views from which are uncommonly interesting. I looked thro’ an old wild Arch—slovenly black Houses, and gardens, as wild as a Dream, over the Hills beyond them, which slip down in one place making a noticeable gap. Had a good Bed, slept well—and left Egremont this morning after Breakfast.
Had a pleasant walk to Calder Abbey—an elegant but not very interesting Ruin, joining to a very handsome Gentleman’s House built of red free-stone, which has the comfortable warm Look of Brick without it’s meanness and multitude of puny squares. This place lies just within the Line of circumference of a Circle of woody Hills—the area, a pretty Plain half a mile perhaps in diameter—and completely cloathed and hid with wood, except one red hollow in these low steep hills, and except behind the Abbey, where the Hills are far higher, and consist of green Fields almost (but not quite) to the Top. Just opposite to Calder Abbey, and on the Line of the Circumference, rises Ponsonby Hill, the Village of Calder Bridge, and it’s interesting Mill, all in Wood, some hidden, some roofs just on a line with the Trees, some higher, but Ponsonby Hall far higher than the rest. I regained the Road, and came to Bonewood, a single Alehouse on the top of the Hill above the Village, Gosforth—drank a pint of Beer (I forgot to tell you that the whole of my expenses at St Bees, a glass of Gin and Water, my Bed, and Breakfast amounted to IId). From this Bonewood is a noble view of the Isle of Man on the one side, and on the other side all the bold dread tops of the Ennerdale and Wastdale Mountains. Indeed the whole way from Egremont I had beautiful Sea Views, the low hills to my right dipping down into inverted Arches, or Angles, and the Sea, often with a Ship seen thro’; while on my left the Steeple and Sca’ Fell facing each other, far above the other Fells, formed in their interspace a great Gap in the Heaven. So I went on, turned Eastward, up the Irt, the Sea behind and Wastdale Mountains before1—and here I am. And now I must go and see the Lake, for immediately at the Foot of the Lake runs a low Ridge so that you can see nothing of the Water till you are at it’s very Edge.
Between the Lake and the Mountains on the left, a low ridge of hill runs parallel with the Lake, for more than half it’s length; and just at the foot of the Lake there is a Bank even and smooth and low like a grassy Bank in a Gentleman’s Park. Along the hilly Ridge I walked thro’ a Lane of green Hazels, with hay-fields and Hay-makers on my Right, beyond the River Irt, and on the other side of the River, Irton Fell with a deep perpendicular Ravine, and a curious fretted Pillar of Clay, crosiershaped, standing up on it. Next to Irton Fells and in the same line are the Screes, and you can look at nothing but the Screes tho’ there were 20 quaint Pillars close by you. The Lake is wholly hidden ‘till your very Feet touch it’, as one may say, and to a Stranger the Burst would be almost overwhelming. The Lake itself seen from it’s Foot appears indeed of too regular shape; exactly like the sheet of Paper on which I am writing, except it is still narrower in respect of it’s length. (In reality however the Lake widens as it ascends and at the head is very considerably broader than at the foot). But yet, in spite of this it is a marvellous sight: a sheet of water between 3 and 4 miles in length, the whole or very nearly the whole of it’s right Bank formed by the Screes, or facing of bare Rock of enormous Height, two-thirds of it’s height downwards absolutely perpendicular; and then slanting off in Screes, or Shiver, consisting of fine red Streaks running in broad Stripes thro’ a stone colour—slanting off from the Perpendicular, as steep as the meal newly ground from the Miller’s spout. So it is at the foot of the Lake; but higher up this streaky Shiver occupies two-thirds of the whole height, like a pointed Decanter in shape, or an outspread Fan, or a long-waisted old maid with a fine prim Apron, or—no, other things that would only fill up the Paper. When I first came the Lake was a perfect Mirror; and what must have been the Glory of the reflections in it! This huge facing of Rock said to be half a mile in perpendicular height, with deep Ravines the whole wrinded [sic] and torrent-worn, except where the pink-striped Screes come in, as smooth as Silk, all this reflected, turned into Pillars, dells, and a whole new-world of Images in the water! The head of the Lake is crowned by three huge pyramidal Mountains, Yewbarrow, Sca’ Fell, and the Great Gavel; Yewbarrow and Sca’ Fell nearly opposite to each other, yet so that the Ness (or Ridge-line, like the line of a fine Nose,) of Sca’ Fell runs in behind that of Yewbarrow while the Ness of great Gavel is still further back, between the two others, and of course, instead of running athwart the Vale it directly falls thus 
The Lake and Vale run nearly from East to West and this figure below will give you some idea of it (But the Transcriber has not ingenuity enough to copy it, nor the full length Portrait of the Author—so they must be dispensed with).1
Melfell (lying South of the Lake) consists of great mountain Steps decreasing in size as they approach the Lake.
My Road led along under Melfell and by Yewbarrow—and now I came in sight of it’s other side called Keppel Crag and then a huge enormous bason-like Cove called Green Crag—as I suppose, from there being no single Patch of green to be seen on any one of it’s perpendicular sides—so on to Kirk Fell, at the foot of which is Thomas Tyson’s House where W[ordsworth] and I slept Novr will be 3 years, and there I was welcomed kindly, had a good Bed, and left it after Breakfast.
Thursday Morning, Augt 5th—went down the Vale almost to the Water Head, and ascended the low Reach between Sca’ Fell and the Screes, and soon after I had gained it’s height came in sight Burnmoor Water, a large Tairn 
nearly of that shape,2 it’s Tail towards Sca’ Fell, at its head a gap forming an inverted arch with Black Coomb and a peep of the Sea seen thro’ it. It lies directly at the Back of the Screes, and the stream that flows from it down thro’ the gap, is called the Mite, and runs thro’ a Vale of it’s own called Miterdale, parallel with the lower part of Wastdale, and divided from it by the high Ridge called Irton Fells. I ascended Sca’ Fell by the side of a torrent, and climbed and rested, rested3 and climbed, ’till I gained the very summit of Sca’ Fell—believed by the Shepherds here to be higher than either Helvellyn or Skiddaw. Even to Black Coomb, before me all the Mountains die away running down westward to the Sea, apparently in eleven ridges and three parallel Vales with their three Rivers, seen from their very Sources to their falling into the Sea, where they form (excepting their Screwlike flexures) the Trident of the Irish Channel at Ravenglass. O my God! what enormous Mountains these are close by me, and yet below the Hill I stand on, Great Gavel, Kirk Fell, Green Crag, and behind, the Pillar, then the Steeple, then the Hay Cock, on the other side and behind me, Great End, Esk Carse, Bow-fell and close to my back two huge Pyramids, nearly as high as Sca’ Fell itself, and indeed parts and parts of Sca’ Fell known far and near by these names, the hither one of Broad Crag, and the next to it (but divided from it by a low Ridge) Doe Crag, which is indeed of itself a great Mountain of stones from a pound to 20 Ton weight embedded in woolly Moss. And here I am lounded—so fully lounded—that tho’ the wind is strong, and the Clouds are hasting hither from the Sea—and the whole air Seaward has a lurid Look—and we shall certainly have Thunder—yet here (but that I am hunger’d and provisionless) here I could lie warm, and wait methinks for tomorrow’s Sun, and on a nice Stone Table am I now at this moment writing to you—between 2 and 3 o’Clock as I guess—surely the first Letter ever written from the Top of Sca’ Fell! But O! what a look down just under my Feet! The frightfullest Cove that might ever be seen, huge perpendicular Precipices, and one Sheep upon it’s only Ledge, that surely must be crag! Tyson told me of this place, and called it Hollow Stones. Just by it and joining together, rise two huge Pillars of bare lead-colored Stone. I am no measurer, but their height and depth is terrible. I know how unfair it is to judge of these Things by a comparison of past Impressions with present—but I have no shadow of hesitation in saying that the Coves and Precipices of Helvellin are nothing to these! From this sweet lounding Place I see directly thro’ Borrowdale, the Castle Crag, the whole of Derwent Water, and but for the haziness of the Air I could see my own House. I see clear enough where it stands
Here I will fold up this Letter. I have Wafers in my Inkhorn, and you shall call this Letter when it passes before you the Sca’ Fell Letter. I must now drop down how I may into Eskdale—that lies under to my right, the upper part of it the wildest and savagest surely of all the Vales that were ever seen from the Top of an English Mountain and the lower part the loveliest.
Eskdale, Friday, Augt. 6th at an Estate House called Toes
There is one sort of Gambling, to which I am much addicted; and that not of the least criminal kind for a Man who has Children and a Concern. It is this. When I find it convenient to descend from a Mountain, I am too confident and too indolent to look round about and wind about ’till I find a track or other symptom of safety; but I wander on, and where it is first possible to descend, there I go, relying upon fortune for how far down this possibility will continue. So it was yesterday afternoon. I passed down from Broad Crag, skirted the Precipices, and found myself cut off from a most sublime Crag-summit, that seemed to rival Sca’ Fell Man in height, and to outdo it in fierceness. A Ridge of Hill lay low down, and divided this Crag (called Doe-Crag) and Broad-crag—even as the hyphen divides the words broad and crag. I determined to go thither; the first place I came to, that was not direct Rock, I slipped down, and went on for a while with tolerable ease—but now I came (it was midway down) to a smooth perpendicular Rock about 7 feet high—this was nothing—I put my hands on the Ledge, and dropped down. In a few yards came just such another. I dropped that too. And yet another, seemed not higher—I would not stand for a trifle, so I dropped that too—but the stretching of the muscle of my hands and arms, and the jolt of the Fall on my Feet, put my whole Limbs in a Tremble, and I paused, and looking down, saw that I had little else to encounter but a succession of these little Precipices—it was in truth a Path that in a very hard Rain is, no doubt, the channel of a most splendid Waterfall. So I began to suspect that I ought not to go on; but then unfortunately tho’ I could with ease drop down a smooth Rock of 7 feet high, I could not climb it, so go on I must; and on I went. The next 3 drops were not half a Foot, at least not a foot, more than my own height, but every Drop increased the Palsy of my Limbs. I shook all over, Heaven knows without the least influence of Fear. And now I had only two more to drop down—to return was impossible—but of these two the first was tremendous, it was twice my own height, and the Ledge at the bottom was exceedingly narrow, that if I drop down upon it I must of necessity have fallen backwards and of course killed myself. My limbs were all in a tremble. I lay upon my Back to rest myself, and was beginning according to my Custom to laugh at myself for a Madman, when the sight of the Crags above me on each side, and the impetuous Clouds just over them, posting so luridly and so rapidly to northward, overawed me. I lay in a state of almost prophetic Trance and Delight and blessed God aloud for the powers of Reason and the Will, which remaining no Danger can overpower us! O God, I exclaimed aloud, how calm, how blessed am I now. I know not how to proceed, how to return, but I am calm and fearless and confident. If this Reality were a Dream, if I were asleep, what agonies had I suffered! what screams! When the Reason and the Will are away, what remain to us but Darkness and Dimness and a bewildering Shame, and Pain that is utterly Lord over us, or fantastic Pleasure that draws the Soul along swimming through the air in many shapes, even as a Flight of Starlings in a Wind.—I arose, and looking down saw at the bottom a heap of Stones which had fallen abroad and rendered the narrow Ledge on which they had been piled doubly dangerous. At the bottom of the third Rock that I dropt from, I met a dead Sheep quite rotten. This heap of stones, I guessed, and have since found that I guessed aright, had been piled up by the Shepherd to enable him to climb up and free the poor Creature whom he had observed to be crag-fast, but seeing nothing but rock over rock, he had desisted and gone for help and in the mean time the poor Creature had fallen down and killed itself. As I was looking at these I glanced my eye to my left, and observed that the Rock was rent from top to bottom. I measured the breadth of the Rent, and found that there was no danger of my being wedged in, so I put my knap-sack round to my side, and slipped down as between two walls, without any danger or difficulty. The next Drop brought me down on the Ridge called the How. I hunted out my Besom Stick, which I had flung before me when I first came to the Rocks, and wisely gave over all thought of ascending Doe-Crag, for now the Clouds were again coming in most tumultuously. So I began to descend, when I felt an odd sensation across my whole Breast—not pain nor itching—and putting my hand on it I found it all bumpy—and on looking saw the whole of my Breast from my Neck—to my Navel, exactly all that my Kamell-hair Breast-shield covers, filled with great red heat-bumps, so thick that no hair could lie between them. They still remain but are evidently less and I have no doubt will wholly disappear in a few Days. It was however a startling proof to me of the violent exertions which I had made. I descended this low Hill which was all hollow beneath me—and was like the rough green Quilt of a Bed of waters. At length two streams burst out and took their way down, one on [one] side a high Ground upon this Ridge, the other on the other. I took that to my right (having on my left this high ground, and the other Stream, and beyond that Doe-crag, on the other side of which is Esk Halse, where the head-spring of the Esk rises, and running down the Hill and in upon the Vale looks and actually deceived me, as a great Turnpike Road—in which, as in many other respects the Head of Eskdale much resembles Langdale) and soon the Channel sank all at once, at least 40 yards, and formed a magnificent Waterfall—and close under this a succession of Waterfalls 7 in number, the third of which is nearly as high as the first. When I had almost reached the bottom of the Hill, I stood so as to command the whole 8 Waterfalls, with the great triangle-crag looking in above them, and on the one side of them the enormous and more than perpendicular Precipices and Bull’s-Brows, of Sea’ Fell! And now the Thunder-Storm was coming on, again and again! Just at the bottom of the Hill I saw on before me in the Vale, lying just above the River on the side of a Hill, one, two, three, four Objects; I could not distinguish whether Peat-hovels, or hovel-shaped Stones. I thought in my mind, that 3 of them would turn out to be stones—but that the fourth was certainly a Hovel. I went on toward them, crossing and recrossing the Becks and the River and found that they were all huge Stones—the one nearest the Beck which I had determined to be really a Hovel, retained its likeness when I was close beside. In size it is nearly equal to the famous Bowder Stone, but in every other respect greatly superior to it—it has a complete Roof, and that perfectly thatched with weeds, and Heath, and Mountain-Ash Bushes. I now was obliged to ascend again, as the River ran greatly to the Left, and the Vale was nothing more than the Channel of the River, all the rest of the interspace between the Mountains was a tossing up and down of Hills of all sizes—and the place at which I am now writing is called—Te-as, and spelt, Toes—as the Toes of Sca’ Fell. It is not possible that any name can be more descriptive of the Head of Eskdale. I ascended close under Sca’ Fell, and came to a little Village of Sheep-folds—there were 5 together—and the redding Stuff, and the Shears, and an old Pot, was in the passage of the first of them. Here I found an imperfect Shelter from a Thunder-shower accompanied with such Echoes! O God! what thoughts were mine! O how I wished for Health and Strength that I might wander about for a Month together, in the stormiest month of the year, among these Places, so lonely1 and savage and full of sounds! After the Storm I passed on and came to a great Peat-road, that wound down a Hill, called Maddock How, and now came out upon the first cultivated Land which begins with a Bridge that goes over a Stream, a Waterfall of considerable height and beautifully wooded above you, and a great water-slope under you. The Gill down which it falls, is called Scale Gill and the Fall Scale Gill Force. (The word Scale and Scales is common in this Country—and is said by [blank] to be derived from the Saxon Sceala; the wattling of Sheep; but judging from the places themselves, Scale Force and this Scale Gill Force, I think it as possible that it is derived from Scalle—which signifies a deafening Noise.) Well, I passed2 thro’ some sweet pretty Fields, and came to a large Farm-house where I am now writing. The place is called Toes or Te-as—the Master’s name John Vicars Towers. They received me hospitably. I drank Tea here and they begged me to pass the Night—which I did and supped of some excellent Salmonlings, which Towers had brought from Ravenglass whither he had been, as holding under the Earl of Egremont, and obliged ‘to ride the Fair’—a custom introduced during the time of Insecurity and piratical Incursion for the Protection of Ravenglass Fair. They were a fine Family—and a Girl who did not look more than 12 years old, but was nearly 15, was very beautiful, with hair like vine-tendrils. She had been long ill and was a sickly child. ‘Ah poor Bairn!’ (said the Mother) ‘worse luck for her, she looks like a Quality Bairn, as you may say.’ This Man’s Ancestors have been time out of mind in the Vale, and here I found that the common Names, Towers and Tozers are the same; er signifies ‘upon’—as Mite-er-dale the Dale upon the River Mite, Donnerdale, a Contraction of Duddon-er-dale, the Dale upon the River Duddon. So Towers, pronounced in the Vale Te-ars—and Tozers is those who live on the Toes—i.e. upon the Knobby feet of the Mountain. Mr. Tears has mended my pen. This morning after breakfast I went out with him, and passed up the Vale again due East, along a higher Road, over a heathy upland, crossed the upper part of Scale Gill, came out upon Maddock How, and then ascending turned directly Northward, into the Heart of the Mountains; on my left the wild Crags under which flows the Scale Gill Beck, the most remarkable of them called Cat Crag (a wild Cat being killed there) and on my right hand six great Crags, which appeared in the mist all in a file, and they were all, tho’ of different sizes, yet the same shape, all triangles. Other Crags far above them, higher up the Vale, appeared and disappeared as the mists passed and came—one with a waterfall, called Spout Crag—and another most tremendous one, called Earn Crag. I passed on a little way, till I came close under a huge Crag, called Buck Crag, and immediately under this is Four-foot Stone—having on it the clear marks of four foot-steps. The Stone is in its whole breadth just 36 inches, (I measured it exactly) but the part that contains the marks is raised above the other part and is just 20 1/2 Inches. The length of the Stone is 321/2 Inches. The first foot-mark is an Ox’s foot—nothing can be conceived more exact; this is 5 3/4 Inches wide. The second is a Boy’s shoe in the Snow, 91/2 Inches in length; this too is the very Thing itself, the Heel, the bend of the Foot, &c. The third is the Foot-step, to the very Life of a Mastiff Dog—and the fourth is Derwent’s very own first little Shoe, 4 Inches in length and O! it is the sweetest Baby Shoe that ever was seen. The wie-foot in Borrowdale is contemptible; but this really does work upon my imagination very powerfully and I will try to construct a Tale upon it. The place too is so very, very wild, I delighted the Shepherd by my admiration, and the Four Foot Stone is my own Christening, and Towers undertakes it shall hereafter go by that name for hitherto it has been nameless. And so I returned and have found a Pedlar here of an interesting Physiognomy—and here I must leave off—for Dinner is ready——
After the Thunder-storm I shouted out all your Names1 in the Sheep-fold—when Echo came upon Echo, and then Hartley and Derwent and then I laughed and shouted Joanna. It leaves all the Echoes I ever heard far far behind, in number, distinctness and humanness of Voice; and then not to forget an old Friend, I made them all say Dr. Dodd &c.
Keswick Augt. 25th 1802
All night it rained incessantly and in a hard storm of Rain this morning, at 1/2 past 10, I set off, and drove away toward Newlands. There is a Waterfall that divides Great Robinson from Buttermere Halse Fell, which when Mary, and Tom, and I passed, we stopped and said—what a wonderful Creature it would be in a hard Rain. Dear Mary was especially struck with it’s latent greatness and since that time I have never passed it without a haunting wish to see it in it’s fury. It is just 8 miles from Keswick. I had a glorious Walk—the rain sailing along those black Crags and green Steeps, white as the woolly Down on the underside of a Willow Leaf, and soft as Floss Silk and silver Fillets of Water down every Mountain from top to bottom that were as fine as Bridegrooms. I soon arrived at the Halse and climbed up by the waterfall as near as I could, to the very top of the Fell but it was so craggy, the Crags covered with spongy soaky Moss, and when bare so jagged as to wound one’s hands fearfully, and the Gusts came so very sudden and strong, that the going up was slow, and difficult and earnest and the coming down, not only all that, but likewise extremely dangerous. However, I have always found this stretched and anxious state of mind favorable to depth of pleasurable Impressions in the resting Places and lownding Coves.
The Thing repaid me amply. It is a great Torrent from the Top of the Mountain to the Bottom; the lower part of it is not the least Interesting, where it is beginning to slope to a level. The mad water rushes thro’ its sinuous bed, or rather prison of Rock, with such rapid Curves as if it turned the Corners not from the mechanic force but with foreknowledge, like a fierce and skilful Driver: great Masses of Water, one after the other, that in twilight one might have feelingly compared them to a vast crowd of huge white Bears, rushing, one over the other, against the wind—their long white hair scattering abroad in the wind. The remainder of the Torrent is marked out by three great Waterfalls, the lowermost Apron-shaped, and though the Rock down which it rushes is an inclined Plane, it shoots off in such an independence of the Rock as shews that its direction was given it by the force of the Water from above. The middle which in peaceable times would be two tinkling Falls formed in this furious Rain one great Water-wheel endlessly revolving and double the size and height of the lowest. The third and highest is a mighty one indeed. It is twice the height of both the others added together, nearly as high as Scale Force, but it rushes down an inclined Plane, and does not fall, like Scale Force; however, if the Plane has been smooth, it is so near a Perpendicular that it would have appeared to fall, but it is indeed so fearfully savage, and black, and jagged, that it tears the flood to pieces. And one great black Outjutment divides the water, and overbrows and keeps uncovered a long slip of jagged black Rock beneath, which gives a marked Character to the whole force. What a sight it is to look down on such a Cataract! The wheels, that circumvolve in it, the leaping up and plunging forward of that infinity of Pearls and Glass Bulbs, the continual change of the Matter, the perpetual Sameness of the Form—it is an awful Image and Shadow of God and the World. When I reached the very top, where the Stream flows level, there were feeding three darling Sheep, with their red ochre Letters on their sides, as quiet as if they were by a Rill in a flat meadow, flowing clear over smooth tressy water-weeds, and thro by long Grass. Bless their dear hearts, what darlings Mountain Sheep are! A little above the summit of the Waterfall I had a very striking view. The Lake and part of Keswick in a remarkably interesting point of view seen at the end of the Vista formed by the vale of Newlands—this was on my right—and as I turned to my left, the Sun burst out and I saw close by me part of the Lake of Buttermere, but not an inch of any one of it’s Shores or of the Vale—but over away beside Crummock a white shining dazzling view of the Vale of Lorton and the Sea beyond it.
I went to Lodore on Sunday.1 It was finer than I had ever seen it before. Never were there three Waterfalls so different from each other, as Lodore, Buttermere Halse Fall, and Scale Force. Scale Force is a proper Fall between two very high and narrow Walls of Rock, well tree’d—yet so that the Trees rather add to, than lessen the precipice Walls. Buttermere Halse Fall is a narrow, open, naked Torrent with three great Water-slopes individualized in it one above another, large, larger, largest. Lodore has it’s Walls, but they are scarcely Walls, they are wide apart, and not upright, and their beauty and exceeding Majesty take away the Terror—and the Torrent is broad and wide, and from top to bottom it is small Waterfalls, abreast and abreast. Buttermere Halse Fall is the War-song of a Scandinavian Bard. Lodore is the Precipitation of the fallen Angels from Heaven, Flight and Confusion, and Distraction, but all harmonized into one majestic Thing by the genius of Milton, who describes it. Lodore is beyond all rivalry the first and best Thing of the whole Lake Country. Indeed (but we cannot judge at all from Prints) I have seen nothing equal to it in the Prints and Sketches of the Scotch and Swiss Cataracts.
MS.
…. Pindar’s remark on sweet Music holds equally true of Genius; as many as are not delighted by it are disturbed, perplexed, irritated. The Beholder either recognizes it as a projected Form of his own Being, that moves before him with a Glory round its head, or recoils from it as from a Spectre.
Aids to Reflection
Coleridge comments: This refers to a curious phaenomenon which occurs occasionally when the air is filled with fine particles of frozen Snow, constituting an almost invisibly subtle Snow-mist, and a Person is walking with the Sun behind his Back. His Shadow is projected and he sees a figure moving before him with a glory round its Head. I have myself seen it twice: and it is described in the first or second Volume of the Manchester Philosophical Transactions.
MS.
Scales, Stipulae, Chaff, from the bases of the leaves of the Beech Tree on May 23, 1825, on the rich dark green Moss carpet.
The glossy Scales that gay as living things
Dance in the Winnow of the Moss-bees’ wings
That hovers o’er the Moss beneath the Beech
Then renews his routing toil
Delving and tearing up
With head and sturdy thighs—Bombyx Muscorum.
N.B. What do the humblebees do in those small hollow funnels they make? Often they put their hind Half and orange plush small-clothes in these funnels and move backward and forward—? cleaning their clothes from any thing sticky, from nectarin, or honey-dew—or ovi-position. I, however, could never find any the least speck even with a glass in the bottom of the funnel.
MS.
SOME NOTES ON WHITE’S ‘SELBORNE’
White writes: Thus is instinct in animals, taken the least out of it’s [sic] way an undistinguishing, limited faculty; and blind to every circumstance that does not immediately respect self-preservation, or lead at once to the propagation or support of their species.
Coleridge comments: This is an inadequate explanation. I would rather say, that Instinct is the wisdom of the species, not of the Individual; but that let any circumstance occur regularly and thro’ many generations, that then its every-time-felt inconvenience would by little and little act thro’ the blind sensations on the organic frame of the animals, till at length they were born wise in that respect. And by the same process do they lose their not innate but connate wisdom: thus Hens hatched in an artificial oven, as in Egypt, in 3 or 4 generations (the same process having been repeated in each) lose their instinct of Brooding. I trust that this Note will not be considered as lessening the value of this sweet delightful Book. S. T. Coleridge, July 7, 1810. Keswick.
MS.
White refers to ‘these cobweb-like appearances called gossamer’.
Coleridge comments: Permit me to observe as a certain yet hitherto unnoticed, etymology of this word, that it is ‘God’s Dame’s Hair’, and in monkish Latin (where I found it) called Fila Mariœ, capilla matris Dei. Thus Gossip, i.e. God’s Sib.
White, discussing gypsies with a Greek name, then in the south of England writes: It would be matter of some curiosity could one meet with an intelligent person among them, to inquire whether in their jargon they still retain any Greek words.
Coleridge comments: This has been done by a learned German (Grellman) who has made it evident, that they are the remains of an expelled nation from between Persia and Hindostan.
White: Thus far it is plain that the deprivation of masculine vigour puts a stop to the growth of those parts or appendages that are looked upon as its insignia. But the ingenious Mr. Lisle in his book on husbandry carries it much farther; for he says that the loss of these insignia alone has sometimes a strange effect on the ability itself.
Coleridge comments: Blumenbach told me, that the abscission of the Horns of the Stag and Male Deer had the effect of Castration.
MS.
White in Letter XLII describes the flight of various birds.
Coleridge comments: This letter has disappointed me. I have myself made and collected a better table of characters of Flight and Motion.
White describes ‘honey-dews’.
Coleridge comments: This is now known to be saccharine excrement of the Aphides. It is a true sugar. No wonder therefore that, tho’ not directly vegetable, the Bees are fond of it.
White describes the summer of 1783, ‘an amazing and portentous one, and full of horrible phenomena; for, besides the alarming meteors and tremendous thunderstorms that affrighted and distressed the different counties of this kingdom, the peculiar haze or smoky fog … was a most extraordinary appearance.’
Coleridge comments: occasioned by the eruption of four tremendous Rivers of Fire in Iceland.
MS.
Wonderful, perplexing divisibility of Life. It is related by D. Unzer, an authority wholly to be relied on, that an Ohrwurm (Earwig?) cut in half eat its’ own hinder half. Will it be the reverse with G. Britain and America? The Head of the rattlesnake severed from the body bit at, and squirted out its poison. Related by Beverley in his Hist[ory] of Virginia. Lyonnet in his Insect-theology] tore a wasp in half, and 3 days after the fore-half bit whatever was presented to it of its’ former food, and the hind-half darted out its’ sting on being touched. *Boyle mentions a female butterfly that when beheaded not only admitted the male but lay eggs in consequence of the impregnation.* But a Turtle has lived six months with his Head off and wandered about, yea, six hours after it’s heart and bowels (all but the Lungs) were taken out. How shall we think of this compatible with the monad Soul? If I say what has Spirit to do with space, what odd dreams it would suggest? Or is every animal a republic in sei Or is there one Breeze of Life, at once the soul of each and God of all? Is it not strictly analogous to generation, and no more contradictory to unity than it? But it? Aye! there’s the Twist in the Logic. Is not the reproduction of the Lizard a complete generation! O it is easy to dream, and surely better of these things than of a 20,000 £ Prize in the Lottery, or of a Place at Court! 13 Dec. 1804. Malta.
MS.
All that can be done by the most patient and active industry, by the widest and most continuous researches; all that the amplest survey of the vegetable realm, brought under immediate contemplation by the most stupendous collections of species and varieties, can suggest; all that minutest dissection and exactest chemical analysis, can unfold; all that varied experiment and the position of plants and of their component parts in every conceivable relation to light, heat, (and whatever else we distinguish as imponderable substances), to earth, air, water, to the supposed constituents of air and water, separate and in all proportions—in short, all that chemical agents and re-agents can disclose or adduce;—all these have been brought, as conscripts, into the field, with the completest accoutrement, in the best discipline, under the ablest commanders. Yet after all that was effected by Linnaeus himself, not to mention the labours of Gesner, Caesalpinus, Ray, Tournefort, and the other heroes who preceded the general adoption of the sexual system, as the basis of artificial arrangement;—after all the successive toils and enterprises of Hedwig, Jussieu, Mirbel, Sir James Smith, Knight, Ellis, &c. &c.,—what is botany at this present hour? Little more than an enormous nomenclature; a huge catalogue, bien arrangé, and yearly and monthly augmented, in various editions, each with its own scheme of technical memory and its own conveniences of reference! A dictionary in which (to carry on the metaphor) an Ainsworth arranges the contents by the initials; a Walker by the endings; a Scapula by the radicals; and a Cominius by the similarity of the uses and purposes! The terms system, method, science, are mere improprieties of courtesy, when applied to a mass enlarging by endless appositions, but without a nerve that oscillates, or a pulse that throbs, in sign of growth or inward sympathy. The innocent amusement, the healthful occupation, the ornamental accomplishment of amateurs (most honourable indeed and deserving of all praise as a preventive substitute for the stall, the kennel, and the subscription-room), it has yet to expect the devotion and energies of the philosopher.
So long back as the first appearance of Dr. Darwin’s Phytologia the writer, then in earliest manhood, presumed to hazard the opinion, that the physiological botanists were hunting in a false direction, and sought for analogy where they should have looked for antithesis. He saw, or thought he saw, that the harmony between the vegetable and animal world, was not a harmony of resemblance, but of contrast; and that their relation to each other was that of corresponding opposites. They seemed to him, (whose mind had been formed by observation, unaided, but at the same time unenthralled, by partial experiment) as two streams from the same fountain indeed, but flowing the one due west, and the other direct east; and that consequently, the resemblance would be as the proximity, greatest in the first and rudimental products of vegetable and animal organization. Whereas, according to the received notion, the highest and most perfect vegetable, and the lowest and rudest animal forms, ought to have seemed the links of the two systems, which is contrary to fact. Since that time, the same idea has dawned in the minds of philosophers capable of demonstrating its objective truth by induction of facts in an unbroken series of correspondences in nature. From these men, or from minds enkindled by their labours, we may hope hereafter to receive it, or rather the yet higher idea to which it refers us, matured into LAWS of organic nature, and thence to have one other splendid proof, that with the knowledge of LAW alone dwell Power and Prophecy, decisive Experiment, and, lastly, a scientific method, that dissipating with its earliest rays the gnomes of hypothesis and the mists of theory may, within a single generation, open out on the philosophic seer discoveries that had baffled the gigantic, but blind and guideless, industry of ages.
Such, too, is the case with the assumed indecomponible substances of the laboratory. They are the symbols of elementary powers, and the exponents of a law, which, as the root of all these powers, the chemical philosopher, whatever his theory may be, is instinctively labouring to extract. This instinct, again, is itself but the form, in which the idea, the mental correlative of the law, first announces its incipient germination in his own mind: and hence proceeds the striving after unity of principle through all the diversity of forms, with a feeling resembling that which accompanies our endeavours to recollect a forgotten name; when we seem at once to have and not to have it; which the memory feels but cannot find. Thus, as ‘the lunatic, the lover, and the poet’, suggest each the other to Shakespeare’s Theseus, as soon as his thoughts present to him the ONE FORM, of which they are but varieties; so water and flame, the diamond, the charcoal, and the mantling champagne, with its ebullient sparkles, are convoked and fraternized by the theory of the chemist. This is, in truth, the first charm of chemistry, and the secret of the almost universal interest excited by its discoveries. The serious complacency which is afforded by the sense of truth, utility, permanence, and progression, blends with and ennobles the exhilarating surprise and the pleasurable sting of curiosity, which accompany the propounding and the solving of an enigma. It is the sense of a principle of connection given by the mind, and sanctioned by the correspondency of nature. Hence the strong hold which in all ages chemistry has had on the imagination. If in Shakespeare we find nature idealized into poetry, through the creative power of a profound yet observant meditation, so through the meditative observation of a Davy, a Wollaston, or a Hatchett;
____________________‘By some connatural force,
Powerful at greatest distance to unite
With secret amity things of like kind,’
we find poetry, as it were, substantiated and realized in nature,—yea, nature itself disclosed to us, geminam istam naturam, quae fit et facit, et creat et creatur, as at once the poet and the poem.
Friend.
A NOTE ON OERSTED’S ‘ANSICHT DER CHEMISCHEN NATURGESETZE’
It is of the highest importance in all departments of knowledge to keep the Speculative distinct from the Empirical. As long as they run parallel, they are of the greatest service to each other: they never meet but to cut and cross. This is Oersted’s fault, the rock of offence on which this Work strikes. Davy is necessarily right: for he follows the established Regula recta of empirical chemistry, viz. that all Bodies shall be considered as simple, till they shall have been shewn to be compound. On this Rule, Chlorine, and Iodine claim the title of Simple Bodies (Stoffen) with the same right as Oxygen, or the Metals, while the Speculative Chemist sees a priori, that all alike must be composite.
MS.
… I cannot suppress the suggestion that the Qualitative Energies, the inside of the metallic Bodies must be looked to, in order to discover the most proper character of Metallity, and that one great purpose of the Noun Adjectives Oxygen+Chlorine+Iodine and Hydrogen is to express their qualities—by destroying or exhausting their quantitative and outside power of Cohesion—or appropriate Attraction! That this the Contractive and the Dilative restore the conditions under which the Qualities can be called from potence into Act. The Twymetal, Iron, must be slightly oxydated in order to reveal its magnetic life. Even mechanic Divisions, as in filings, by overpowering the cohesion enabled metal to communicate its astringency: its tonic Virtue is the force of Cohesion as changed into a transitive or causative Quality.
MS.
Oken, writing about Newton’s theory of light, says he speaks harshly but not unjustly, and that he will, in what follows, ‘ganz ruhig’ refute it.
Coleridge comments: Good Heaven! how much more would Oken have done, how much more both wit and wisdom would he have displayed, if instead of this rough Railing and d-n-your-eyes-you-lie Ipse-dixits, he had begun with this ‘quite-quiet confutation of the Newtonian Doctrine’, especially it being so very easy a task! Goethe (not indeed ‘ganz ruhig) had attempted it in detail both by impeachment of Newton’s Experiments, and by Counter-experiments of his own. And yet, G. himself confesses, that he had not succeeded in convincing or converting a single Mathematician, not even among his own friends and Intimates.
That a clear and sober confutation of Newton’s [Optics as far as crossed out] Theory of Colors [are concerned crossed out] is practicable, the exceeding unsatisfied state, in which Sir I. Newton’s first Book of Optics leaves my mind—strongly persuades me. And it is Oken’s mountebank Boasting and Threatening that alone make me sceptical as to his own ability to perform the promise, here given by him. S. T. C.
P.S.I readily admit, that the full exhibition of another Theory adequate to the Sum of the Phaenomena, and grounded on more safe and solid principles, would be virtually the best confutation—but no one who knows [note unfinished].
MS.
Oken writes: Yellow is the span of red turned to white; blue is the span of red turned to black, or yellow is a white, blue is a black red.
Coleridge comments: These, even these, are the passages that annoy me in the Natur-philosophen! Yellow a white, and Blue a black Red!! It is true, I know what Oken means by the words—but why Oken chose such words to convey such meanings, I do not know—tho’ Vanity is so common a foible, a Quackery so ordinary a symptom and effect of that so common Foible, that I can pretty well guess. Goethe, and then Schelling and Steffens, had opposed to the Newtonian optics the ancient doctrine of Light and Shadow on the ground principle of Polarity—Yellow being the positive, Blue the negative, Pole, Red the Culmination and Green the Indifference. Oken follows them—but stop! He waits till they are out of sight. Hangs out a new Banner (i.e. metaphor) and becomes a Leader himself. S. T. C.
MS.
Next to that, to which there is no Near, the 
[guilt] and the avenging Daemon of my Life, I must place the neglect of Mathematics, under the strongest motives, and the most favorable helps and opportunities for acquiring them. Not a week passes in which I do not regret this Oversight of my Youth with a sort of remorse that turns it to a Sin.—This day I read the account of Faraday’s Microphone and instantly recognized a fond and earnest dream-project of my own of 30 years’ standing—with sundry other imaginations respecting what might be effected in the only embryo Science of Acoustics. The Walls of Jerico were to fall before my War-trumpet[s]. But where were the Hands, where the Tools of my Reason? I had not the Organ of all Sciences that respect Space and Quantity. My Dreams were akin to Reason: but I could not awake out of my prophetic Sleep, to effectuate their objectivization—for I was ignorant of the Mathematics! S. T. C.
MS.
In the Kabbalistische Briefe of Jean Baptiste de Boyer, Benkiber writes to Abukibak on the inadequacy of geometry to application in physics, arguing that Newton as a geometrician believed in the infinite divisibility of matter, and as a physicist denied it with his solid atoms.
Coleridge comments: What philosophic Mathematician ever supposed Geometry to be anything else, than a system of the conceivable and inconceivable in the mind’s constructive Intuitions? It is wholly ideal. Newton’s solid atoms are utter aliens from Geometry, in which the mind exclusively contemplates its own energies: and applies them not otherwise than hypothetically. Newton erred by introducing Dogmatic Realism into the Ideal World.—Solid atoms are not an hypothesis, as Gravity is; but a mere Hypo-pœsis.
MS.
August 1817.
Q[uer]y. The sulphurous smell noticeable even in the air after great heats immediately before Storms with Thunder and the forked zig-zag Lightning—and intensely strong in rooms that have been struck with Lightning (as in the late Tempest at Lueben [? Quebec]—does it proceed from Sulphur? If so, whence does the Sulphur come?
If there exist in Nature a power converting Nitrogene into Hydrogen, the latter being supposed the Protoxide, the former a Deutroxide of the supposit[it]ious Ammonium or in a more philosophic Language, Nitrogene being the Base X in the condition of + Magnetism, and Hydrogen the same Base under the condition of + Electricity, an intermediate or transitional state is conceivable, namely, that in which X is indifferently Base and Spirit, Base to A, Spirit or Modifier to B. And what [if] Sulphur were this product?
Q[uer]y. Is it within my present Quantum of Light to construct imaginatively a product or series of products that in their very nature shall be componible, yet not decomponible? i.e. Indecomponible compounds.
If all primary Numbers, ex. gr. 5=1, in all the simple proportions of the five forces of the One Power, be such, then what are the primary Numbers—namely, in how many several forms of predominance, varied by the relations of co- and subordination in the four powers predominated, can the one be multiplied—
B C D F G=1
B C D F G
c b b b b
d d c c c
f f f d d
g g g g f
I=5
But it may be B.f.g.c.d, B d f g c &c. A School-boy in Cube Root would tell me in a few minutes.
B=attraction. D=Repulsion. C=contraction. F=Dilution. G—Centrality.
MS.
It is a wonderful property of the human mind, that when once a momentum has been given to it in a fresh direction, it pursues the new path with obstinate perseverance, in all conceivable bearings, to its utmost extremes. And by the startling consequences which arise out of these extremes, it is first awakened to its error, and either recalled to some former track, or receives some fresh impulse, which it follows with the same eagerness, and admits to the same monopoly. Thus in the 13th century the first science which roused the intellects of men from the torpor of barbarism, was, as in all countries ever has been, and ever must be the case, the science of Metaphysics and Ontology. We first seek what can be found at home.… For more than a century men continued to invoke the oracle of their own spirits, not only concerning its own forms and modes of being, but likewise concerning the laws of external nature. All attempts at philosophical explication were commenced by a mere effort of the understanding, as the power of abstraction; or by the imagination, transferring its own experiences to every object presented from without. By the former, a class of phenomena were in the first place abstracted, and fixed in some general term; of course this could designate only the impressions made by the outward objects, and so far, therefore, having been thus metamorphosed, they were effects of these objects; but then made to supply the place of their own causes, under the name of occult qualities. Thus the properties peculiar to gold, were abstracted from those it possessed in common with other bodies, and then generalized in the term Aureity: and the inquirer was instructed that the Essence of Gold, or the cause which constituted the peculiar modification of matter called gold was the power of aureity. By the latter, i.e. by the imagination, thought and will were superadded to the occult quality, and every form of nature had its appropriate Spirit, to be controlled or conciliated by an appropriate ceremonial. This was entitled its SUBSTANTIAL FORM. Thus, physics became a sort of poetry, and the art of medicine (for physiology could scarcely be said to exist) was a system of magic, blended with traditional empiricism. Thus the forms of thought proceeded to act in their own emptiness, with no attempt to fill or substantiate them by the information of the senses, and all the branches of science formed so many sections of logic and metaphysics. And so it continued, even to the time that the Reformation sounded the second trumpet, and the authority of the schools sank with that of the hierarchy, under the intellectual courage and activity which this great revolution had inspired. Power, once awakened, cannot rest in one object. All the sciences partook of the new influences. The world of experimental philosophy was soon mapped out for posterity by the comprehensive and enterprising genius of Bacon, and the laws explained by which experiment could be dignified into experience. But no sooner was the impulse given, than the same propensity was made manifest of looking at all things in the one point of view which chanced to be of predominant attraction. Our Gilbert, a man of genuine philosophical genius, had no sooner multiplied the facts of magnetism, and extended our knowledge concerning the property of magnetic bodies, but all things in heaven, and earth, and in the waters beneath the earth, were resolved into magnetic influences.
Shortly after a new light was struck by Harriott and Descartes, with their contemporaries, or immediate predecessors, and the restoration of ancient geometry, aided by the modern invention of algebra, placed the science of mechanism on the philosophic throne. How widely this domination spread, and how long it continued, if, indeed, even now it can be said to have abdicated its pretensions, the reader need not be reminded. The sublime discoveries of Newton, and, together with these, his not less fruitful than wonderful application, of the higher mathesis to the movements of the celestial bodies, and to the laws of light, gave almost a religious sanction to the corpuscular system and mechanical theory. It became synonymous with philosophy itself. It was the sole portal at which truth was permitted to enter. The human body was treated of as an hydraulic machine, the operations of medicine were solved, and alas! even directed by reference partly to gravitation and the laws of motion, and partly by chemistry, which itself, however, as far as its theory was concerned, was but a branch of mechanics working exclusively by imaginary wedges, angles, and spheres. Should the reader chance to put his hand on the ‘Principles of Philosophy’, by La Forge, an immediate disciple of Descartes, he may see the phenomena of sleep solved in a copper-plate engraving, with all the figures into which the globules of the blood shaped themselves, and the results demonstrated by mathematical calculations. In short, from the time of Kepler to that of Newton, and from Newton to Hartley, not only all things in external nature, but the subtlest mysteries of life and organization, and even of the intellect and moral being, were conjured within the magic circle of mathematical formulae. And now a new light was struck by the discovery of electricity, and, in every sense of the word, both playful and serious, both for good and for evil, it may be affirmed to have electrified the whole frame of natural philosophy. Close on its heels followed the momentous discovery of the principal gases by Scheele and Priestley, the composition of water by Cavendish, and the doctrine of latent heat by Black. The scientific world was prepared for a new dynasty; accordingly, as soon as Lavoisier had reduced the infinite variety of chemical phenomena to the actions, reactions, and interchanges of a few elementary substances, or at least excited the expectation that this would speedily be effected, the hope shot up, almost instantly, into full faith, that it had been effected. Henceforward the new path, thus brilliantly opened, became the common road to all departments of knowledge: and, to this moment, it has been pursued with an eagerness and almost epidemic enthusiasm which, scarcely less than its political revolutions, characterise the spirit of the age. Many and inauspicious have been the invasions and inroads of this new conqueror into the rightful territories of other sciences; and strange alterations have been made in less harmless points than those of terminology, in homage to an art unsettled, in the very ferment of imperfect discoveries, and either without a theory, or with a theory maintained only by composition and compromise. Yet this very circumstance has favoured its encroachments, by the gratifications which its novelty affords to our curiosity, and by the keener interest and higher excitement which an unsettled and revolutionary state is sure to inspire. He who supposes that science possesses an immunity from such influences knows little of human nature.
Theory of Life.
The truths of Reason, as distinguished from Truths of History, are all anonymous. There is no heraldry in Science. Not a Quis Dixit? but Quid dixit? is the question here.
MS.
Grew, in his Cosmologia Sacra, 1701, suggests that ‘the Moon may be inhabited but has… perhaps a different Furniture of Animals’.
Coleridge comments: But why, of necessity, any? Must all possible Planets be lousy? None exempt from the Morbus pedicularis of our verminous man-becrawled Earth?
MS.
Desideratum—A dry Ink, that will write smoothly, and with virtual fluency, neither slurring, scratching, nor stamping the Paper.
MS.
But in experimental philosophy, it may be said how much do we not owe to accident? Doubtless: but let it not be forgotten, that if the discoveries so made stop there; if they do not excite some master IDEA; if they do not lead to some LAW (in whatever dress of theory or hypotheses the fashions and prejudices of the time may disguise or disfigure it):—the discoveries may remain for ages limited in their uses, insecure and unproductive. How many centuries, we might have said millennia, have passed, since the first accidental discovery of the attraction and repulsion of light bodies by rubbed amber &c. Compare the interval with the progress made within less than a century after the discovery of the phaenomena that led immediately to a THEORY of electricity. That here as in many other instances, the theory was supported by insecure hypotheses; that by one theorist two heterogeneous fluids are assumed, the vitreous and the resinous; by another, a plus and minus of the same fluid; that a third considers it a mere modification of light; while a fourth composes the electrical aura of oxygen, hydrogen, and caloric; this does but place the truth we have been evolving in a stronger and clearer light. For abstract from all these suppositions, or rather imaginations, that which is common to, and involved in them all; and we shall have neither notional fluid or fluids, nor chemical compounds, nor elementary matter,—but the idea of two—opposite—forces, tending to rest by equilibrium. These are the sole factors of the calculus, alike in all the theories. These give the law, and in it the method, both of arranging the phaenomena and of substantiating appearances into facts of science; with a success proportionate to the clearness or confusedness of the insight into the law. For this reason, we anticipate the greatest improvements in the method, the nearest approaches to a system of electricity, from these philosophers, who have presented the law most purely, and the correlative idea as an idea: those, namely, who, since the year 1798, in the true spirit of experimental dynamics, rejecting the imagination of any material substrate, simple or compound, contemplate in the phaenomena of electricity the operation of a law which reigns through all nature, the law of POLARITY, or the manifestation of one power by opposite forces; who trace in these appearances, as the most obvious and striking of its innumerable forms, the agency of the positive and negative poles of a power essential to all material construction; the second, namely, of the three primary principles, for which the beautiful and most appropriate symbols are given by the mind in the three ideal dimensions of space.
The time is, perhaps, nigh at hand, when the same comparison between the results of two unequal periods, the interval between the knowledge of a fact, and that from the discovery of the law,—will be applicable to the sister science of magnetism. But how great the contrast between magnetism and electricity at the present moment! From remotest antiquity, the attraction of iron by the magnet was known and noticed; but, century after century, it remained the undisturbed property of poets and orators. The fact of the magnet and the fable of the phoenix stood on the same scale of utility. In the thirteenth century, or perhaps earlier, the polarity of the magnet, and its communicability to iron, were discovered; and soon suggested a purpose so grand and important, that it may well be deemed the proudest trophy ever raised by accident in the service of mankind—the invention of the compass. But it led to no idea, to no law, and consequently to no Method: though a variety of phaenomena, as startling as they are mysterious, have forced on us a presentiment of its intimate connection with all the great agencies of nature; of a revelation, in ciphers, the key to which is still wanting. I can recall no event of human history that impresses the imagination more deeply than the moment when Columbus, on an unknown ocean, first perceived one of these startling facts, the change of the magnetic needle.
In what shall we seek the cause of this contrast between the rapid progress of electricity and the stationary condition of magnetism? As many theories, as many hypotheses, have been advanced in the latter science as in the former. But the theories and fictions of the electricians contained an idea, and all the same idea, which has necessarily led to METHOD; implicit indeed, and only regulative hitherto, but which requires little more than the dismission of the imagery to become constitutive like the ideas of the geometrician. On the contrary, the assumptions of the magnetists (as for instance, the hypothesis that the planet itself is one vast magnet, or that an immense magnet is concealed within it, or that of a concentric globe within the earth, revolving on its own independent axis) are but repetitions of the same fact or phaenomenon looked at through a magnifying glass; the reiteration of the problem, not its solution. The naturalist, who cannot or will not see, that one fact is often worth a thousand, as including them all in itself, and that it first makes all the others facts, who has not the head to comprehend, the soul to reverence, a central experiment or observation (what the Greeks would perhaps have called a protophaenomenon),—will never receive an auspicious answer from the oracle of nature.
Friend.