That is the most excellent state of society in which the patriotism of the citizen ennobles, but does not merge, the individual energy of the man. And he can give common sense as well as wisdom imaginative form, as in the sentence: Truth is a good dog; but beware of barking too close to the heels of error, lest you get your brains knocked out. "I am, by the law of my nature, a reasoner," said Coleridge, and he explained that he did not mean by this "an arguer." He was a discoverer of order, of laws, of causes, not a controversialist. He sought after principles, whether in politics or literature. He quarrelled with Gibbon because his _Decline and Fall_ was "little else but a disguised collection of ... splendid anecdotes" instead of a philosophic search for the ultimate causes of the ruin of the Roman Empire. Coleridge himself formulated these causes in sentences that are worth remembering at a time when we are debating whether the world of the future is to be a vast boxing ring of empires or a community of independent nations. He said: The true key to the declension of the Roman Empire--which is not to be found in all Gibbon's immense work--may be stated in two words: the imperial character overlaying, and finally destroying, the _national_ character. Rome under Trajan was an empire without a nation. One must not claim too much for Coleridge, however. He was a seer with his head among the stars, but he was also a human being with uneven gait, stumbling amid infirmities, prejudices, and unhappinesses. He himself boasted in a delightful sentence: For one mercy I owe thanks beyond all utterance--that, with all my gastric and bowel distempers, my head hath ever been like the head of a mountain in blue air and sunshine.