Transcendental Roots
"Coleridge"
Frederic Henry Hedge The Christian Examiner, March 1833
[Frederic Henry Hedge, Unitarian
minister and professor of German literature and ecclesiastical history
at Harvard, was a strong voice in Transcendentalism. His visits to Boston
from his home in Bangor, Maine occasioned the gathering of what Emerson
called the "Hedge Club" but was more commonly called the "Transcendental
Club." The following essay, which Hedge claimed was "the first word, so
far as I know, which any American had uttered in respectful recognition
of the claims of Transcendentalism," made a great impression on Emerson,
who called it "a living leaping Logos." However, it says little about Coleridge,
except as a conveyer of Kant and German transcendentalism. It firmly rejects
the materialism of Locke for the philosophy of Kant.]
There is no writer of our times whose literary
rank appears so ill-defined as that of Mr. Coleridge. Perhaps there is
no one whose true standing in the literary world is so difficult to determined.
For ourselves we know not a more doubtful problem in criticism than this
author and his works present . . . .
As to the charge of obscurity, so often
and obstinately urged against Mr. Coleridge's prose writings, we cannot
admit it in any thing like the extent in which it has been applied. So
far as there is any ground for this complaint, it is owing to the
author's excessive anxiety to make himself intelligible, an anxiety which
leads him to present a subject in so many points of view, that we are sometimes
in danger of losing the main topic amid the variety of collateral and illustrative
matter which he gathers round it . . . He is certainly not a shallow writer,
but, as we think, a very profound one, and his style is for the most part
as clear as the nature of his thoughts will admit. To those only is he
obscure who have no depths within themselves corresponding to his depths
. . .
In a review of Mr. Coleridge's literary
life, we must not omit to notice that marked fondness for metaphysics,
and particularly for German metaphysics, which has exercised so decisive
an influence over all his writings. Had it been given to him to interpret
German metaphysics to his countrymen, as Mr. [Victor] Cousin has interpreted
them to the French nation, or had it been possible for him to have constructed
a system of his own, we should not have regretted his indulgence of a passion
which we must now condemn as a source of morbid dissatisfaction with received
opinions, unjustified by any serious attempt to introduce others and better
. . . . But thought so ill-qualified for the work of production, one would
think the translator of Wallenstein might have interpreted for us all that
is most valuable in the speculations of Kant and his followers. It has
been said that these works are untranslatable, but without sufficient grounds.
That they are not translatable by one who has not an intimate acquaintance
with the transcendental philosophy, is abundantly evident .. . But in this
respect, and indeed in every respect, Mr. Coleridge is eminently fitted
for such a task; and it is the more to be regretted that he has not undertaken
it, as the number of those who are thus fitted is exceedingly small, while
the demand for information on this subject is constantly increasing. We
are well aware that a mere translation, however perfect, would be inadequate
to convey a definite notion of transcendentalism to one who has not the
metaphysical talent necessary to conceive and reproduce in himself a system
whose only value to us must depend upon our power to construct it for ourselves
from the materials of our own consciousness, and which in fact exists to
us only on this condition.
While we are on this ground, we beg leave
to offer a few explanatory remarks respecting German metaphysics, which
seem to us to be called for by the present state of feeling among literary
men in relation to this subject. We believe it impossible to understand
fully the design of Kant and his followers, without being endowed to a
certain extent with the same powers of abstraction and synthetic generalization
which they possess in so eminent a degree. In order to become fully master
of their meaning, one must be able to find it in himself. Not all are born
to be philosophers, or are capable of becoming philosophers, any more than
all are capable of becoming poets or musicians. The works of the transcendental
philosophers may be translated word for word, but still it will be impossible
to get a clear idea of their philosophy, unless we raise ourselves at once
to a transcendental point of view. Unless we take our station with the
philosopher and proceed from his ground as our starting-point, the whole
system will appear to us an inextricable puzzle. As in astronomy the motions
of the heavenly bodies seem confused to the geocentric observer, and are
intelligible only when referred to their heliocentric place, so there is
only one point from which we can clearly understand and decide upon the
speculations of Kant and his followers; that point is the interior consciousness,
distinguished from the common consciousness, by its being an active and
not a passive state. In the language of the school, it is a free intuition,
and can only be attained by a vigorous effort of the will. It is from an
ignorance of this primary condition, that the writings of these men have
been denounced as vague and mystical. Viewing them from the distance [as]
we do, their discussion seem to us like objects half enveloped in mist;
the little we can distinguish seems most portentously magnified and distorted
by the unnatural refraction through which we behold it, and the point where
they touch the earth is altogether lost. The effect of such writing upon
the uninitiated, is like being in the company of one who has inhaled an
exhilarating gas. We witness the inspiration, and are astounded at the
effects, but we can form no conception of the feeling until we ourselves
have experienced it. To those who are without the veil, then, any exposé
of transcendental views must needs be unsatisfactory. Now if any one chooses
to deny the point which these writers assume, if any one chooses to call
in question the metaphysical existence of this interior consciousness,
and to pronounce the whole system a mere fabrication, or a gross self-delusion,--to
such a one the disciples of this school have nothing further to say; for
him their system was not conceived. Let him content himself, if he can,
with "that compendious philosophy which talking of mind, but thinking of
brick and mortar, or other images equally abstracted from body, contrives
a theory of spirit, by nicknaming matter, and in a few hour can qualify
the dullest of its disciplines to explain the omne scibile by reducing
all things to impression, ideas, and sensations." The disciplines
of Kant wrote for minds of quite another stamp, they wrote for minds that
seek with faith and hope a solution of questions which that philosophy
meddles not with,--questions which relate to spirit and form, substance
and life, free will and fate, God and eternity. Let those who feel no interest
in these questions, or who believe not in the possibility of our approaching
any nearer to a solution of them, abstain for ever from a department of
inquiry for which they have neither talent nor call. There are certain
periods in the history of society, when, passing from a state of spontaneous
production to a state of reflection, mankind are particularly disposed
to inquire concerning themselves and their destination, the nature of their
being, the evidence of their knowledge, and the grounds of their faith.
Such a tendency is one of the characteristics of the present age, and the
German philosophy is the strongest expression of that tendency; it is a
striving after information on subjects which have been usually considered
as beyond the reach of human intelligence, an attempt to penetrate into
the most hidden mysteries of our being. In every philosophy, there are
three things to be considered, the object, the method, and the result.
In the transcendental system, the object is to discover in every
form of finite existence, an infinite and unconditioned as the ground of
its existence, or rather as the ground of our knowledge of its existence,
to refer all phenomena to certain noumena, or laws of cognition.
It is not a ratio essendi, but a ratio cognoscendi; it seeks
not to explain the existence of God and creation, objectively considered,
but to explain our knowledge of their existence. It is not a skeptical
philosophy; it seeks not to overthrow, bu to build up; it wars not with
the common opinions and general experience of mankind, but aims to place
these on a scientific basis, and to verify them by scientific demonstration.
The method is synthetical, proceeding from
a given point, the lowest that can be found in our consciousness, and deducing
from that point "the whole world of intelligences, with the whole system
of their representations." The correctness or philosophical propriety of
the construction which is to be based upon this given point, this absolute
thesis, must be assumed for a while, until proved by the successful completion
of the system which it is designed to establish. The test by which we are
to know that the system is complete, and the method correct, is the same
as that by which we judge of the correct construction of the material arch,--continuity
and self-dependence. The last step in the process, the keystone of the
fabric, is the deduction of tie, space, and variety, or, in other words
(as time, space, and variety include the elements of all empiric knowledge),
the establishing of a coincidence between the facts of ordinary experience
and those which we have discovered within ourselves, and scientifically
derived from our first fundamental position. When this step is accomplished,
the system is complete, the hypothetical frame-work may then fall, and
the structure will support itself . . . .
If now it be asked, as probably it will
be asked, whether any definite and substantial good has resulted form the
labors of Kant and his followers, we answer, Much. More than metaphysics
ever before accomplished, these men have done for the advancement of the
human intellect. It is true the immediate, and if we may so speak, the
calculable results of their speculations are not so numerous nor so evident
as might have been expected: these are chiefly comprised under the head
of method. Yet even here we have enough to make us rejoice that such men
have been, and that they have lived and spoken in our day. We need mention
only the sharp and rightly dividing lines that have been drawn within and
around the kingdom of human knowledge; the strongly marked distinctions
of subject and object, reason and understanding, phenomena and noumena;--the
categories established by Kant; the moral liberty proclaimed by him as
it had never been proclaimed by any before; the authority and evidence
of law and duty set forth by "Fichte; the universal harmony illustrated
by Schelling. But in mentioning these things, which are the direct results
of the critical philosophy, we have by no means exhausted all that that
philosophy has done for liberty and truth. The pre-eminence of Germany
among the nations of our day in respect of intellectual culture, is universally
acknowledged; and we do fully believe that whatever excellence that nation
has attained in science, in history, or poetry is mainly owing to the influence
of her philosophy, to the faculty which that philosophy has imparted of
seizing on the spirit of every question, and determining at once the point
of view from which each subject should be regarded,-in one word, to the
transcendental method. In theology this influence has been most conspicuous.
We are indebted to it for that dauntless spirit of inquiry which has investigated,
and for that amazing erudition which has illustrated, every corner of biblical
lore. Twice it has saved the religion of Germany,--once from the extreme
of fanatic extravagance, and again, from the verge of speculative infidelity.
But, though most conspicuous in theology, this influence has been visible
in every department of intellectual exertion to which the German shave
applied themselves for the last thirty years. It has characterized each
science and each art, and all bear witness to its quickening power. A philosophy
which has given such an impulse to mental culture and scientific research,
which has done so much to establish and to extend the spiritual in man,
and the ideal in nature, needs no apology; it commends itself by its fruits,
it lives in its fruits, an must ever live, though the name of its founder
be forgotten, and not one of its doctrines survives.
Links:
Hedge article on "Progress of Society"
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