words in common use; and which preclude all explanation for him who has resolved that none is required. Because there is already a falsity in the very phrases, "words in common use "the language of common sense. Words of most frequent use they may be, common they are not; but the language of the market, and as such, expressing degrees only, and therefore incompetent to the purpose wherever it becomes necessary to designate the kind independent of all degree. The philosopher may, and often does, employ the same words as in the market; but does this supersede the necessity of a previous explanation? As I referred you before to the botanist, so now to the chemist. Light, heat, charcoal, are every man's words. But fixed or invisible light? The frozen heat? Charcoal in its simplest form as diamond, or as black-lead? Will a stranger to chemistry be worse off, would the chemist's language be less likely to be understood by his using different words for distinct meanings, as carbon, caloric, and the like?

But the case is stronger. The chemist is compelled to make words, in order to prevent or remove some error connected with the common word; and this too an error, the continuance of which was incompatible with the first principles and elementary truths of the science he is to teach. to teach. You must submit to regard yourself ignorant even of the words, air and water; and will find, that they are not chemically intelligible without the terms, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, or others equivalent. Now it is even so with the knowledge, which you would have me to communicate. There are certain prejudices of the common, i. e. of the average sense of men, the exposure of which is the first step, the indispensable preliminary, of all rational psychology: and these can not be exposed but by selecting and adhering to some one word, in which we may be able to trace the growth and modifications of the opinion or belief conveyed in this, or similar words, not by any revolution or positive change of the original sense, but by the transfer of this sense and the difference in the application.

Where there is but one word for two or more diverse or disparate meanings in a language (or though there should be several, yet if perfect synonymes, they count but for one word), the language is so far defective. And this is a defect of frequent occurrence in all languages, prior to the cultivation of science, logic,

and philology, especially of the two latter and among a free, lively, and ingenious people, such as the Greeks were, sophistry and the influence of sophists are the inevitable result. To check this evil by striking at its root in the ambiguity of words, Plato wrote the greater part of his published works, which do not so much contain his own system of philosophy, as the negative conditions of reasoning aright on any system. And yet more obviously is it the case with the Metaphysics, Analytics, &c. of Aristotle, which have been well described by Lambert as a dictionary of general terms, the process throughout being, first, to discover and establish definite meanings, and then to appropriate to each a several word. The sciences will take care, each of its own nomenclature; but the interests of the language at large fall under the special guardianship of logic and rational psychology. Where these have fallen into neglect or disrepute, from exclusive pursuit of wealth, excess of the commercial spirit, or whatever other cause disposes men in general to attach an exclusive value to immediate and palpable utility, the dictionary may swell, but the language will decline. Few are the books published within the last fifty years, that would not supply their quota of proofs, that so it is with our own mother English. The bricks and stones are in abundance, but the cement none or naught. That which is indeed the common language exists everywhere as the menstruum, and nowhere as the whole-See Biographia Literaria*—while the language complimented with this name, is, as I have already said, in fact the language of the market. Every science, every trade, has its technical nomenclature ; every folly has its fancy-words; every vice its own slang-and is the science of humanity to be the one exception? Is philosophy to work without tools? to have no straw wherewith to make the bricks for her mansion-house, but what she may pick up on the high-road, or steal, with all its impurities and sophistications, from the litter of the cattle-market?

For the present, however, my demands on your patience are very limited. If as the price of much entertainment to follow, and I trust of something besides of less transitory interest, you will fairly attend to the history of two scholastic terms, OBJECT and SUBJECT, with their derivatives; you shall have my promise that I will not on any future occasion ask you to be attentive, * P. 409.—S. C.

without trying not to be myself dull. That it may cost you no more trouble than necessary, I have brought it under the eye in numbered paragraphs, with scholia or commentary to such as seemed to require it.

Yours most affectionately,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

ON THE PHILOSOPHIC IMPORT OF THE WORDS, OBJECT AND SUBJECT.

§ 1.

Existence is a simple intuition, underived and indecomponible. It is no idea, no particular form, much less any determination or modification of the possible: it is nothing that can be educed from the logical conception of a thing, as its predicate: it is no property of a thing, but its reality itself; or, as the Latin would more conveniently express it-Nulla rei proprietas est, sed ipsa ejus realitas.

SCHOLIUM.

To

Herein lies the sophism in Des Cartes' celebrated demonstration of the existence of the Supreme Being from the idea. In the idea of God are contained all attributes that belong to the perfection of a being: but existence is such therefore, God's existence is contained in the idea of God. this it is a sufficient answer, that existence is not an attribute. It might be shown too, from the barrenness of the demonstration, by identifying the deduction with the premise, i. e. for reducing the minor or term included to a mere repetition of the major or term including. For in fact the syllogism ought to stand thus: the idea of God comprises the idea of all attributes that belong to perfection; but the idea of existence is such therefore the idea of his existence is included in the idea of God.-Now, existence is no idea, but a fact: or, though we had an idea of existence, still the proof of a correspondence to a reality would be wanting, i. e. the very point would be wanting which it was the purpose of the demonstration to supply. Still the idea of the fact is not the fact itself. Besides, the term, idea, is here improperly substituted for the mere supposition of a logical subject, necessarily presumed in order to the conceivableness (cogitabilitas) of any qualities, properties, or

attributes. But this is a mere ens logicum (vel etiam grammaticum), the result of the thinker's own unity of consciousness, and no less contained in the conception of a plant or of a chimera, than in the idea of the Supreme Being. If Des Cartes could have proved, that his idea of a Supreme Being is universal and necessary, and that the conviction of a reality perfectly coincident with the idea is equally universal and inevitable; and that these were in truth but one and the same act or intuition, unique, and without analogy, though, from the inadequateness of our minds, from the mechanism of thought, and the structure of language, we are compelled to express it dividually, as consisting of two correlative terms-this would have been something. But then it must be entitled a statement, not a demonstration-the necessity of which it would supersede. And something like this may perhaps be found true, where the reasoning powers are developed and duly exerted; but would, I fear, do little towards settling the dispute between the religious Theist, and the speculative Atheist or Pantheist, whether this be all, or whether it is even what we mean, and are bound to mean, by the word God. The old controversy would be started, what are the possible perfections of an Infinite Being-in other words, what the legitimate sense is of the term, infinite, as applied to Deity, and what is, or is not compatible with that sense.

§ 2.

I think, and while thinking, I am conscious of certain workings or movements, as acts or activities of my being, and feel myself as the power in which they originate. I feel myself working; and the sense or feeling of this activity constitutes the sense and feeling of EXISTENCE, i. e. of my actual being.

SCHOLIUM.

Movements, motions, taken metaphorically, without relation to space or place. Κινήσεις μὴ κατὰ τόπον; αἱ ὥσπερ κινήσεις, οι ai of Aristotle.

§ 3.

In these workings, however, I distinguish a difference. In some I feel myself as the cause and proper agent, and the movements themselves as the work of my own power. In others, I

acts.

feel these movements as my own activity; but not as my own The first we call the active or positive state of our existence; the second, the passive or negative state. The active power, nevertheless, is felt in both equally. But in the first I feel it as the cause acting, in the second, as the condition, without which I could not be acted on.

SCHOLIUM.

It is a truth of highest importance, that agere et pati are not different kinds, but the same kind in different relations. And this not only in consequence of an immediate re-action, but the act of receiving is no less truly an act, than the act of influencing. Thus, the lungs act in being stimulated by the air, as truly as in the act of breathing, to which they were stimulated. The Greek verbal termination, o, happily illustrates this. Ποιῶ, πράττω, яάσy, in philosophical grammar, are all three verbs active; but the first is the active-transitive, in which the agency passes forth out of the agent into another. Ti noiɛis; what are you doing? The second is the active-intransitive. Τι πράττεις; how do you do? or how are you? The third is the active-passive, or more appropriately the active-patient, the verb recipient or receptive, îl nάozεis; what ails you? Or, to take another idiom of our language, that most livelily expresses the co-presence of an agent, an agency distinct and alien from our own, What is the matter with you? It would carry us too far to explain the nature of verbs passive, as so called in technical grammar. Suffice, that this class originated in the same causes, as led men to make the division of substances into living and dead-a division psychologically necessary, but of doubtful philosophical validity.

§ 4.

With the workings and movements, which I refer to myself and my own agency, there alternate-say rather, I find myself alternately conscious of, forms (= Impressions, images, or better or less figurative and hypothetical, presences, presentations), and of states or modes, which not feeling as the work or effect of my own power I refer to a power other than me, i. e. (in the language derived from my sense of sight) without me. And this is the feeling, I have, of the existence of outward things.