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1829]

COLERIDGE-BOOKS

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that so gregarious are even intellectual men that Aristotle thinks for thousands, and Bacon for his ten thousands, and so, in enumerating the apparently manifold philosophies and forms of thought, we should not be able to count more than seven or eight minds. 'T is the privilege of his independence and of his labour to be counted for one school. His theological speculations are, at least, God viewed from one position; and no wise man would neglect that one element in concentrating the rays of human thought to a true and comprehensive conclusion. Then I love him that he is no utilitarian, nor necessarian, nor scoffer, nor hoc genus omne, tucked away in the corner of a sentence of Plato.

USES OF BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY

December 12.

Pericles is made noble and Luther indomitable to show Canis and Aspen their capabilities. Instead of generating complaint, it should beget all hope.

AUTHORS OR BOOKS MENTIONED OR QUOTED IN JOURNALS OF 1828 AND 1829

Homer; Anaximander, apud De Gerando; Simonides; Democritus; Socrates; Plato;

Virgil; Persius; Juvenal; Plutarch, Lives and Morals; Saint Augustine, Confessions; Dante; Montaigne, Essays; Tasso;

Shakspeare; Ben Jonson; Bacon, De Augmentatione Scientiae; Sir Henry Wotton, Survey of Education; Herrick; Herbert; Milton; Marvell; Saint-Évremond, Sense of an Honest and Experienced Courtier;

Locke; Newton; Scougal, Life of God in the Soul;

Young; Pope, Essay on Man; Samuel Richardson, Sir Charles Grandison ;

Spence, Anecdotes, Observations and Characters; Butler; Cotton Mather, Essays to do Good; Hume, Essays; Priestley; Gibbon; Paley; James Montgomery, The Pelican Island; Sir James Mackintosh; Degerando, Derivation de la Science du Droit ;

Wolf, Prolegomena ad Homerum; De Staël, Germany;

Wordsworth, Excursion, Sonnets, Dion, Intimations of Immortality, etc; Byron ;

Coleridge, Friend, Literary Biographies, Aids to Reflection;

Rev. Henry Ware, Sermon; Rev. Nathaniel L. Frothingham, Sermon ;

Disraeli, Vivian Grey; Bulwer, Pelham.

JOURNAL XXI

1830

From Y, V, and Blotting Book IV

[INTERACTION OF MINDS]

(From Y)

January, 1830.

"THE grandest visions external could not become intellectual, but by the chemistry of those acquired from the minds of others, how far original inspiration influenced is uncertain,as how far a constant agency in harmony with the laws of mind and matter influence at all times the seeker of moral excellence."

AUNT MARY.

I read in Plutarch's Political Precepts, that when Leo Byzantinus went to Athens to appease the dissensions in that city, when he arose to speak, he perceived that they laughed on account of the littleness of his stature. "What would you do," he exclaimed, "if you saw my wife who scarce reaches to my knees?" And

they laughing the more he said, "Yet as little as we are, when we fall out, the city of Byzantium is not big enough to hold us.”

It is strange that the greatest men of the time only say what is just trembling on the lips of all thinking men.

January 4, 1830.

Knowledge, even, God's own attribute and delight and mean, I fear it is but the cock's pearl when it is in a spirit which is not united to the great spirit. Quantum sumus scimus. It will not do for us to dogmatize. Nothing is more untrue to nature. The meanest scholar in Christian practice may often instruct the greatest doctor both in faith and practice. I have no shame in saying, I lean to this opinion, but am not sure. I do not affect or pretend to instruct. O no, it is God working in you that instructs both you and me. I only tell how I have striven and climbed, and what I have seen, that you may compare it with your own observations of the same object. It is important to have some formal observer, whether a keen-sighted one or not, in order to furnish somе Tоû σт, some other point to measure thought by.

1830] YOUR OWN THOUGHT

283

That man will always speak with authority who speaks his own convictions, not the knowledge of his ear or eye, i. e., superstitions got in conversation, or errors or truths remembered from his reading, but that which, true or false, he hath perceived with his inward eye, which therefore is true to him, true even as he tells it, and absolutely true in some element, though. distorted and discolored by some disease in the soul.

Omnia exeunt in mysterium.

BOSTON, January 7, 1830.

"Quelle profonde philosophie," says De Gérando,' "ne supposent pas les législations de Lycurgue et de Solon!" A specimen, it seems to me, had I found it elsewhere, of that superficial admiration which is so common. Neither Lycurgus nor Solon need have been profound thinkers to have made their respective codes, but only practical, severe and persevering men. Wonderful capabilities both moral and intellectual, the formation of a code does indeed suppose, but in the general mind of man, and not in the individual. Lycurgus and Solon were alike in the dark.

1 Histoire Comparée des Systèmes de Philosophie, par M. De Gérando.

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