Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert SoutheyCottle, Joseph
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Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey
Cottle, Joseph
Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834; Southey, Robert, 1774-1843
Notwithstanding the arguments of Spinosa, and Des Cartes, and other
advocates of the _Material system_, or, in more appropriate language, the
_Atheistical system!_ it is admitted by all men, not prejudiced, not
biased by sceptical prepossessions, that _mind_ is distinct from
_matter_. The mind of man, however, is involved in inscrutable darkness,
(as the profoundest metaphysicians well know) and is to be estimated, if
at all, alone by an inductive process; that is, by its _effects_. Without
entering on the question, whether an extremely circumscribed portion of
the mental process, surpassing instinct, may or may not be extended to
quadrupeds, it is universally acknowledged, that the mind of man alone,
regulates all the actions of his corporeal frame. Mind, therefore, may be
regarded as a distinct genus, in the scale ascending above brutes, and
including the whole of intellectual existences; advancing from _thought_,
that mysterious thing! in its lowest form, through all the gradations of
sentient and rational beings, till it arrives at a Bacon, a Newton; and
then, when unincumbered by matter, extending its illimitable sway through
Seraph and Archangel, till we are lost in the GREAT INFINITE!
Is it not deserving of notice, as an especial subject of meditation, that
our _limbs_, in all they do or can accomplish, implicitly obey the
dictation of the _mind_? that this operating power, whatever its name,
under certain limitations, exercises a sovereign dominion not only over
our limbs, but over our intellectual pursuits? The mind of every man is
evidently the fulcrum, the moving force,--which alike regulates all his
limbs and actions: and in which example, we find a strong illustration of
the subordinate nature of mere _matter_. That alone which gives direction
to the organic parts of our nature, is wholly _mind_; and one mind if
placed over a thousand limbs, could, with undiminished ease, control and
regulate the whole.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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