It may readily be imagined that after the Speculative Reason has been made to perform such feats as these the remainder of the work proposed to it could present no serious difficulty. And in the half-dozen chapters which follow it is made to evolve in succession the doctrine of the Incarnation, the Advent, and the Atonement of Christ, and to explain the mysteries of the fall of man and of original sin. Considered in the aspect in which Coleridge himself would have preferred to regard his pupil's work, namely as a systematic attempt to lead the minds of men to Christianity by an intellectual route, no more hopeless enterprise perhaps could have been conceived than that embodied in these volumes. It is like offering a traveller a guide-book written in hieroglyphics. Upon the most liberal computation it is probable that not one-fourth part of educated mankind are capable of so much as comprehending the philosophic doctrine upon which Coleridge seeks to base Christianity, and it is doubtful whether any but a still smaller fraction of these would admit that the foundation was capable of supporting the superstructure. That the writings of the pupil, like the teachings of the master whom he interprets, may serve the cause of religion in another than an intellectual way is possible enough. Not a few of the functions assigned to the Speculative Reason will strike many of us as moral and spiritual rather than intellectual in their character, and the appeal to them is in fact an appeal to man to chasten the lower passions of his nature, and to discipline his unruly will. Exhortations of that kind are religious all the world of philosophy over, and will succeed in proportion to the moral fervour and oratorical power which distinguish them. But if the benefits of Coleridge's theological teachings are to be reduced to this, it would of course have been much better to have dissociated them altogether from the exceedingly abstruse metaphysic to which they have been wedded. FOOTNOTES 1. Were it not hazardous to treat processes of the Speculative Reason as we deal with the vulgar dialectic of the Understanding, one would be disposed to reply that if the above argument proves the existence of three persons in the Godhead, it must equally prove the existence of three persons in every man who reflects upon his conscious self. That the Divine Mind, when engaged in the act of self-contemplation, must be conceived under three relations is doubtless as true as that the human mind, when so engaged, must be so conceived; but that these three relations are so many objective realities is what Mr. Green asserts indeed a few pages farther on, but what he nowhere attempts to prove. CHAPTER XII. Coleridge's position in his later years--His discourse--His influence on contemporary thought--Final review of his intellectual work.