Note 72 — AIDS TO REFLECTION IN THE FORMATION OF A MANLY CHARACTER, ON THE SEVERAL GROUNDS OF PRUDENCE, MORALITY, AND RELIGION. (continued 4)

At a period, in which Doctors Marsh and Wordsworth have, by the Zealous on one side, being charged with Popish principles on account of their Anti-bibliolatry, and the sturdy adherents of the doctrines common to Luther and Calvin, and the literal interpreters of the Articles and Homilies, are, (I wish I could say, altogether without any fault of their own) regarded by the Clergy generally as virtual Schismatics, dividers of, though not from, the Church, it is serving the cause of charity to assist in circulating the following instructive passage from the Life of Bishop Hackett respecting the dispute between the Augustinians, or Luthero-Calvinistic divines and the Grotians of his age: in which Controversy (says his biographer) he, Hackett, "was ever very moderate."

"But having been bred under Bishop Davenant and Dr. Ward in Cambridge, he was addicted to their sentiments. Archbishop Usher would say, that Davenant understood those controversies better than ever any man did since St. Augustine. But he (Bishop Hackett) used to say, that he was sure he had three excellent men of his mind in this controversy: 1. Padre Paolo (Father Paul) whose letter is extant in Heinsius, anno 1604: 2. Thomas Aquinas: 3. St. Augustine. But besides and above them all, he believed in his Conscience that St. Paul was of the same mind likewise. Yet at the same time he would profess, that he disliked no Arminians, but such as revile and defame every one who is not so: and he would often commend Arminius himself for his excellent wit and parts, but only tax his want of reading and knowledge in Antiquity. And he ever held, it was the foolishest thing in the world to say the Arminians were Popishly inclined, when so many Dominicians and Jansenists were rigid followers of Augustine in these points: and no less foolish to say that the Anti-Arminians were Puritans or Presbyterians, when Ward, and Davenant, and Prideaux, and Brownrig, those stout champions for Episcopacy, were decided Anti-Arminians; while Arminius himself was ever a Presbyterian. Therefore he greatly commended the moderation of our Church, which extended equal Communion to both."

[73] Aranea prodigiosa. See Baker's Microscopic Experiments.

[74] May not this Rule be expressed more intelligibly (to a mathematician at least) thus:—Reasoning from finite to finite, on a basis of truth, also, reasoning from infinite to infinite, on a basis of truth, will always lead to truth, as intelligibly as the basis on which such truths respectively rest.—While, reasoning from finite to infinite, or from infinite to finite, will lead to apparent absurdity, although the basis be true: and is not such apparent absurdity, another expression for "truth unintelligible by a finite mind"?

[75] For example: at the date of St. Paul's Epistles, the (Roman) world may be resembled to a mass in the furnace in the first moment of fusion, here a speck and there a spot of the melted metal shining pure and brilliant amid the scum and dross. To have received the name of Christian was a privilege, a high and distinguished favour. No wonder therefore, that in St. Paul's writings the words, elect, and election, often, nay, most often, mean the same as eccalumeni, ecclesia, that is, those who have been called out of the world: and it is a dangerous perversion of the Apostle's word to interpret it in the sense, in which it was used by our Lord, viz. in opposition to the called. (Many are called but few chosen.) In St. Paul's sense and at that time the believers collectively formed a small and select number; and every Christian real or nominal, was one of the Elect. Add too, that this ambiguity is increased by the accidental circumstance, that the kyriak, Ædes Dominicæ, Lord's House, kirk; and ecclesia, the sum total of the eccalumeni, evocati, called out; are both rendered by the same word Church.

[76] Or (I may add) any Idea which does not either identify the Creator with the Creaton; or else represent the Supreme Being as a mere impersonal Law or ordo ordinans, differing from the Law of Gravitation only by its universality.

[77] I have elsewhere remarked on the assistance which those that labour after distinct conceptions would receive from the re-introduction of the terms objective, and subjective, objective and subjective reality, and the like, as substitutes for real and notional, and to the exclusion of the false antithesis between real and ideal. For the Student in that noblest of the sciences, the scire teipsum, the advantage would be especially great.[78] The few sentences that follow, in illustration of the terms here advocated, will not, I trust, be a waste of the reader's time.

The celebrated Euler having demonstrated certain properties of arches, adds: "All experience is in contradiction to this; but this is no reason for doubting its truth." The words sound paradoxical; but mean no more than this—that the mathematical properties of figure and space are not less certainly the properties of figure and space because they can never be perfectly realized in wood, stone, or iron. Now this assertion of Euler's might be expressed at once, briefly and simply, by saying, that the properties in question were subjectively true, though not objectively—or that the mathematical arch possessed a subjective reality though incapable of being realized objectively.

In like manner if I had to express my conviction, that space was not itself a thing, but a mode or form of perceiving, or the inward ground and condition in the percipient, in consequence of which things are seen as outward and co-existing, I convey this at once by the words, space is subjective, or space is real in and for the subject alone.

If I am asked, Why not say in and for the mind, which every one would understand? I reply: we know indeed, that all minds are Subjects; but are by no means certain, that all subjects are minds. For a mind is a subject that knows itself, or a subject that is its own object. The inward principle of Growth and individual Form in every seed and plant is a subject, and without any exertion of poetic privilege poets may speak of the soul of the flower. But the man would be a dreamer, who otherwise than poetically should speak of roses and lilies as self-conscious subjects. Lastly, by the assistance of the terms, Object and Subject, thus used as correspondent opposites, or as negative and positive in physics (for example, negative and positive electricity) we may arrive at the distinct import and proper use of the strangely misused word, idea. And as the forms of logic are all borrowed from geometry (Ratiocinatio discursiva formas suas sive canonas recipit ab intuitu) I may be permitted to elucidate my present meaning. Every line may be, and by the ancient Geometricians was, considered as a point produced, the two extremes being its poles, while the point itself remains in, or is at least represented by, the midpoint, the indifference of the two poles or correlative opposites. Logically applied, the two extremes or poles are named Thesis and Antithesis: thus in the line

I

T-----------------------A

we have T = Thesis, A = Antithesis, and I = Punctum Indifferens sive amphotericum, which latter is to be conceived as both in as far as it may be either of the two former. Observe: not both at the same time in the same relation; for this would be the identity of T and A, not the indifference:—but so, that relatively to A, I is equal to T, and relatively to T it becomes = A. For the purposes of the universal Noetic, in which we require terms of most comprehension and least specific import, might not the Noetic Pentad be,—

1. Prothesis.

2. Thesis. 4. Mesothesis. 3. Antithesis.

5. Synthesis.

Prothesis.

Sum.

Thesis. Methosesis. Antithesis.

Res. Agere. Ago, Patior.

Synthesis.

Agens.

1. Verb Substantive = Prothesis, as expressing the identity or coinherence of Act and Being.

2. Substantive = Thesis, expressing Being. 3. Verb = Antithesis, expressing, Act. 4. Infinite = Mesothesis, as being either Substantive or Verb, or both at once, only in different relations. 5. Participle = Synthesis. Thus in Chemistry Sulphuretted Hydrogen is an Acid relatively to the more powerful Alkalis, and an Alkali relatively to a powerful Acid. Yet one other remark, and I pass to the question. In order to render the constructions of pure Mathematics applicable to Philosophy, the Pythagoreans, I imagine, represented the Line as generated, or, as it were, radiated, by a Point not contained in the Line but independent, and (in the language of that School) transcendent to all production, which it caused but did not partake in. Facit, non patitur. This was the punctum invisible, et presuppositum: and in this way the Pythagoreans guarded against the error of Pantheism, into which the later schools fell. The assumption of this Point I call the logical prothesis. We have now therefore four Relations of Thought expressed: 1. Prothesis, or the Identity of T and A, which is neither, because in it, as the transcendent of both, both are contained and exist as one. Taken absolutely, this finds its application in the Supreme Being alone, the Pythagorean tetractys; the ineffable name, to which no Image can be attached; the Point, which has no (real) Opposite or Counter-point. But relatively taken and inadequately, the germinal power of every seed[79] might be generalized under the relation of Identity. 2. Thesis, or position. 3. Antithesis, or Opposition. 4. Indifference. To which when we add the Synthesis or Composition, in its several forms of Equilibrium, as in quiescent Electricity; of Neutralization, as of Oxygen and Hydrogen in water; and of Predominance, as of Hydrogen and Carbon with Hydrogen, predominant, in pure alcohol; or of Carbon and Hydrogen, with the comparative predominance of the Carbon, in Oil; we complete the five most general Forms or Preconceptions of Constructive Logic.

And now for the answer to the question. What is an idea, if it mean neither an Impression on the Senses, nor a definite Conception, nor an abstract Notion? (And if it does mean either of these, the word is superfluous: and while it remains undetermined which of these is meant by the word, or whether it is not which you please, it is worse than superfluous. See the 'Statesman's Manual,' Appendix ad finem.) But supposing the word to have a meaning of its own, what does it mean?—What is an idea?—In answer to this I commence with the absolutely Real as the prothesis; the subjectively Real as the thesis; the objectively Real as the Antithesis: and I affirm, that Idea is the indifference of the two—so namely, that if it be conceived as in the Subject, the Idea is an Object, and possesses Objective Truth; but if in an Object, it is then a Subject and is necessarily thought of as exercising the powers of a Subject. Thus an idea conceived as subsisting in an Object becomes a law; and a Law contemplated subjectively (in a mind) is an Idea.

[78] See the 'Selection from Mr. Coleridge's Literary Correspondence' in Blackwood's Magazine, 1821, Letter II.—Ed.

[79] See Comment on Moral and Religious Aphorism VI., p. 40.—Ed.

[80] In a letter to a friend on the mathematical atheists of the French Revolution, La Lande and others, or rather on a young man of distinguished abilities, but an avowed and proselyting partizan of their tenets, I concluded with these words: "The man who will believe nothing but by force of demonstrative evidence (even though it is strictly demonstrable that the demonstrability required would countervene all the purposes of the truth in question, all that render the belief of the same desirable or obligatory) is not in a state of mind to be reasoned with on any subject. But if he further denies the fact of the Law of Conscience, and the essential difference between right and wrong, I confess, he puzzles me. I cannot without gross inconsistency appeal to his Conscience and Moral Sense, or I should admonish him that, as an honest man, he ought to advertize himself, with a Cavete omnes! Scelus sum. And as an honest man myself, I dare not advise him on prudential grounds to keep his opinions secret, lest I should make myself his accomplice, and be helping him on with a wrap-rascal."