The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 2Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
History
The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 2
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Literature -- History and criticism; Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Criticism and interpretation
to Plato, they are constitutive likewise, and one in essence with the
power and life of nature;--[Greek: hen log'o z'oae aen, kai hae z'oae
haen to ph'os t'on anthr'op'on]. And this I assert, was the philosophy
of the mythic poets, who, like Æschylus, adapted the secret doctrines of
the mysteries as the (not always safely disguised) antidote to the
debasing influences of the religion of the state.
But to return and conclude this preliminary explanation. We have only to
substitute the term will, and the term constitutive power, for _nomos_
or law, and the process is the same. Permit me to represent the identity
or 'prothesis' by the letter Z and the 'thesis' and 'antithesis' by X
and Y respectively. Then I say X by not being Y, but in consequence of
being the correlative opposite of Y, is will; and Y, by not being X, but
the correlative and opposite of X, is nature,--'natura naturans',
[Greek: no_mos physiko_s]. Hence we may see the necessity of
contemplating the idea now as identical with the reason, and now as one
with the will, and now as both in one, in which last case I shall, for
convenience sake, employ the term 'Nous', the rational will, the
practical reason.
We are now out of the holy jungle of transcendental mataphysics; if
indeed, the reader's patience shall have had strength and persistency
enough to allow me to exclaim--
Ivimus ambo
Per densas umbras: at tenet umbra Deum.
Not that I regard the foregoing as articles of faith, or as all true;--I
have implied the contrary by contrasting it with, at least, by shewing
its disparateness from, the Mosaic, which, 'bona fide', I do regard as
the truth. But I believe there is much, and profound, truth in it,
'supra captum [Greek: psilosoph'on], qui non agnoscunt divinum, ideoque
nec naturam, nisi nomine, agnoscunt; sed res cunctas ex sensuali
corporeo cogitant, quibus hac ex causa interiora clausa manent, et simul
cum illis exteriora quæ proxima interioribus sunt'! And with no less
confidence do I believe that the positions above given, true or false,
are contained in the Promethean 'mythus'.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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