the principle of Socrates: the consequence of it is, that virtue may be taught, and may be acquired: and that philosophy alone can point us out the way to it. More than our word, Ignorance, is contained in the 'Aualia of Plato. I, however, freely acknowledge, that this was the point of view, from which Socrates did for the most part contemplate moral good and evil. Now and then he seems to have taken a higher station, but soon quitted it for the lower, more generally intelligible. Hence the vacillation of Socrates himself; hence, too, the immediate opposition of his disciples, Antisthenes and Aristippus. But that this was Plato's own principle I exceedingly doubt. That it was not the principle of Platonism, as taught by the first Academy under Speusippus, I do not doubt at all. See the xivth Essay, pp. 96-102 of The Friend. In the sense in which ἀμαθίας πάντα κακὰ ἐῤῥίζωται, κ. τ. λ. is maintained in that Essay, so and no otherwise can it be truly asserted, and so and no otherwise did ὡς εμοί γε δοκεῖ, Plato teach it. BARRY CORNWALL.* BARRY CORNWALL is a poet, me saltem judice: and in that sense of the term, in which I apply it to C. Lamb and W. Wordsworth. There are poems of great merit, the authors of which I should yet not feel impelled so to designate. The faults of these poems are no less things of hope, than the beauties; both are just what they ought to be,—that is, new. If B. C. be faithful to his genius, it in due time will warn him, that as poetry is the identity of all other knowledges, so a poet can not be a great poet, but as being likewise inclusively an historian and naturalist, in the light, as well as the life, of philosophy all other men's worlds are his chaos. Hints obiter are:-not to permit delicacy and exquisiteness to seduce into effeminacy. Not to permit beauties by repetition to become mannerisms. To be jealous of fragmentary composition, -as epicurism of genius, and apple-pie made all of quinces. Item, that dramatic poetry must be poetry hid in thought and passion,-not thought or passion disguised in the dress of poetry. * Written in Mr. Lamb's copy of the 'Dramatic Scenes.'-Ed. Lastly, to be economic and withholding in similes, figures, &c. They will all find their place, sooner or later, each as the luminary of a sphere of its own. There can be no galaxy in poetry, because it is language, ergo processive, ergo every the smallest star must be seen singly. There are not five metrists in the kingdom, whose works are known by me, to whom I could have held myself allowed to have spoken so plainly. But B. C. is a man of genius, and it depends on himself (competence protecting him from gnawing or distracting cares)-to become a rightful poet,—that is, a great man. Oh! for such a man worldly prudence is transfigured into the highest spiritual duty! How generous is self-interest in him, whose true self is all that is good and hopeful in all ages, as far as the language of Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton shall become the mother-tongue! A map of the road to Paradise, drawn in purgatory, on the confines of Hell, by S. T. C. July 30, 1819. ON THE MODE OF STUDYING KANT. EXTRACT FROM A LETTER OF MR. COLERIDGE TO J. GOODEN, ESQ.* ACCEPT my thanks for the rules of the harmony. 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 ground-work of a library of northern literature, and by bringing together the many gentlemen who are attached to it to 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 nicknamed, but in the only accurate sense of the term, there neither are, have been, or ever will be but two essentially different schools of philosophy, the Platonic, and the Aristotelian. To the latter but with a some * This letter and the following notes on Jean Paul were communicated by Mr. H. C. Robinson.-S. C. what nearer approach to the Platoric, 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 labor and long time. First, I asked myself, have I the labor 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. Permit 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. They 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, * Biographia Literaria, chap. xii. p. 322.—S. C. NOTES ON THE PALINGENESIEN OF JEAN PAUL. 401 Platonism is but a hollow affectation. Dryden could not have been a Platonist: Shakspeare, Milton, Dante, Michel 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. 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 ehrbar hinströmt, sondern wie ein 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 merit; 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. But surely Kant's aim was not to give a full Sittenlehre, or * 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 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 nock dièse als Quelle von jener gelten lassen kar system of practical material morality, but the à 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. DEAR 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 my True History from Fairy Land, or the World Without, and the World Within. 2. The commencement of the Annals and Philosophy of Superstition; for the completion of which I am waiting only for a very curious folio, in Mr. s possession. 3. The life of Holty, a German poet, of true genius, who died in early manhood; with specimens of his poems, translated, or freely imitated in English verse. It would have been more in the mode to have addressed myself to the Editor, but I could not give up this one opportunity of assuring you that I am, my dear Sir, With every friendly wish, your obliged, S. T. COLERIDGE. Mr. Blackwood. |