273

ON THE MODE OF STUDYING KÅNT.

EXTRACT FROM A LETTER OF MR. COLERIDGE TO

A

J. GOODEN, ESQ.*

CCEPT thanks for the rules of the har

my

mony. I perceive that the members are chiefly merchants; but yet it were to be wished, that such an enlargement of the society could be brought about as, retaining all its present purposes, might add to them the groundwork of a library of northern literature, and by bringing together the many gentlemen who are attached to it be the means of eventually making both countries better acquainted with the valuable part of each other; especially, the English with the German, for our most sensible men look at the German Muses through a film of prejudice and utter misconception.

With regard to philosophy, there are half a dozen things, good and bad, that in this country are so nick-named, but in the only accurate sense of the term, there neither are, have been, or ever will be but two essentially different schools of phi

This letter and the following notes on Jean Paul were communicated by Mr. H. C. Robinson. S. C.

losophy, the Platonic, and the Aristotelian. To the latter but with a somewhat nearer approach to the Platonic, Emanuel Kant belonged; to the former Bacon and Leibnitz, and, in his riper and better years, Berkeley. And to this I profess myself an adherent—nihil novum, vel inauditum audemus ; though, as every man has a face of his own, without being more or less than a man, so is every true philosopher an original, without ceasing to be an inmate of Academus or of the Lyceum. But as to caution, I will just tell you how I proceeded myself twenty years and more ago, when I first felt a curiosity about Kant, and was fully aware that to master his meaning, as a system, would be a work of great labour and long time. First, I asked myself, have I the labour and the time in my power? Secondly, if so, and if it would be of adequate importance to me if true, by what means can I arrive at a rational presumption for or against? I inquired after all the more popular writings of Kant-read them with delight. I then read the Prefaces of several of his systematic works, as the Prolegomena, &c. Here too every part, I understood, and that was nearly the whole, was replete with sound and plain, though bold and to me novel truths; and I followed Socrates' adage respecting Heraclitus: all I understand is excellent, and I am bound to presume that the rest is at least worth the trouble of trying whether it be not equally so. In other words, until I understand a writer's ignorance, I presume myself ignorant of his understanding. Per

mit me to refer you to a chapter on this subject in my Literary Life.*

Yet I by no means recommend to you an extension of your philosophic researches beyond Kant. In him is contained all that can be learned, and as to the results, you have a firm faith in God, the responsible Will of Man and Immortality; and Kant will demonstrate to you, that this faith is acquiesced in, indeed, nay, confirmed by the Reason and Understanding, but grounded on Postulates authorized and substantiated solely by the Moral Being. There are likewise mine: and whether the Ideas are regulative only, as Aristotle and Kant teach, or constitutive and actual, as Pythagoras and Plato, is of living interest to the philosopher by profession alone. Both systems are equally true, if only the former abstain from denying universally what is denied individually. He, for whom Ideas are constitutive, will in effect be a Platonist; and in those for whom they are regulative only, Platonism is but a hollow affectation. Dryden could not have been a Platonist: Shakspeare, Milton, Dante, Michael Angelo and Rafael could not have been other than Platonists. Lord Bacon, who never read Plato's works, taught pure Platonism in his great work, the Novum Organum, and abuses his divine predecessor for fantastic nonsense, which he had been the first to explode. Accept my best respects, &c.

14 Jan. 1814. Highgate.

*

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Biographia Literaria, vol. i. chap. xii. p. 242. S. C.

276

NOTES ON THE PALINGENESIEN OF

JEAN PAUL.

Written in the blank leaf at the beginning.

-S ist zu merken, dass die Sprache in diesem Buch nicht sey wie in gewöhnlich Bette, darin der Gedankenstrom ordentlich and chrbar hinströmt, sondern wie cin Verwüstung in Damm and Deichen.*

Preface p. xxxi.

Two Revolutions, the Gallican, which sacrifices the individuals to the Idea or to the State, and in time of need, even the latter themselves;- and the Kantian-Moralist, (Kantisch-Moralische), which abandons the affection of human Love altogether, because it can so little be described as inerit; these draw and station us forlorn human creatures ever further and more lonesomely one from another, each on a frosty uninhabited island: nay the Gallican, which excites and arms feelings against feelings, does it less than the Critical, which teaches us to disarm and to dispense with them altogether; and which neither allows Love to pass for the spring of virtue, nor virtue for the source of Love.t Transl.

* It is observable that the language in this book is not as in an ordinary channel, wherein the stream of thought flows on in a seemly and regular manner, but like a violent flood rushing against dyke and mole.

+ Zwei Revoluzionen, diè gallische, welche der Idee oder dem Staate diè Individuen, and im Nothsal dièsen selber opfert, und die kantisch-moralische, welche den Affekt der Menschenliebe liegen lässet, weil er so wenig wie Verdienste geboten werden kan, diese ziehen und stellen

But surely Kant's aim was not to give a full Sittenlehre, or system of practical material morality, but the a priori form-Ethice formalis: which was then a most necessary work, and the only mode of quelling at once both Necessitarians and Meritmongers, and the idol common to both, Eudæmonism. If his followers have stood still in lazy adoration, instead of following up the road thus opened out to them, it is their fault not Kant's. S.T.C.

FROM BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH

MAGAZINE, Oct. 1821.

LETTER FROM MR. COLERIDGE.

EAR SIR,-In the third letter (in the little parcel,) which I have headed with your name, you will find my reasons for wishing these five letters, and a sixth, which will follow in my next, on the plan and code of a Magazine, which should unite the utile and dulce, to appear in the first instance. My next will consist of very different articles, apparently; namely, the First Book of

uns verlassene Menschen immer weiter und einsamer aus cinander, jeden nur auf ein frostiges unbewohntes Eiland; ja die gallische, die nur Gefühle gegen Gefühle bewafnet und aufhezt, thut es weniger als die kritische, die sie entwafnen und entbehren lehrt, und die weder die Lièbe als Quelle der Tugend noch dièse als Quelle von jener gelten lassen kan.