Anima Poetae Part 8

7. Self-absorption and worldly-mindedness (N.B.--The latter a most philosophical word).

8. The dim intellect sees an absolute oneness, the perfectly clear intellect _knowingly perceives_ it. Distinction and plurality lie in the betwixt.

9. The naked savage and the gymnosophist.

10. Nothing and intensest absolute being.

11. Despotism and ochlocracy.

[Sidenote: ABSTRUSE RESEARCH]

A dirty business! "How," said I, with a great effort to conquer my laziness and a great wish to rest in the generality, "what do you include under the words 'dirty business'"? I note this in order to remember the reluctance the mind has in general to a.n.a.lysis.

The soul within the body--can I, any way, compare this to the reflection of the fire seen through my window on the solid wall, seeming, of course, within the solid wall, as deep within as the distance of the fire from the wall. I fear I can make nothing out of it; but why do I always hurry away from any interesting thought to do something uninteresting? As, for instance, when this thought struck me, I turned off my attention suddenly and went to look for the copy of Wolff which I had missed. Is it a cowardice of all deep feeling, even though pleasurable? or is it laziness? or is it something less obvious than either? Is it connected with my epistolary embarra.s.sments?

["The window of my library at Keswick is opposite to the fireplace. At the coming on of evening, it was my frequent amus.e.m.e.nt to watch the image or reflection of the fire that seemed burning in the bushes or between the trees in different parts of the garden."--_The Friend._ _Coleridge's Works_, ii. 135.]

As I was sitting at the foot of my bed, reading with my face downwards, I saw a phantom of my face upon the nightcap which lay just on the middle of my pillow--it was indistinct but of bright colours, and came only as my head bent low. Was it the action of the rays of my face upon my eyes? that is, did my eyes see my face, and from the sidelong and faint action of the rays place the image in that situation? But I moved the nightcap and I lost it.

[Sidenote: Dec. 19, 1803, morning]

I have only to shut my eyes to feel how ignorant I am whence these forms and coloured forms, and colours distinguishable beyond what I can distinguish, derive their birth. These varying and infinite co-present colours, what are they? I ask, to what do they belong in my waking remembrance? and almost never receive an answer. Only I perceive and know that whatever I change, in any part of me, produces some change in these eye-spectra; as, for instance, if I press my legs or change sides.

[Sidenote: OF STREAMY a.s.sOCIATION]

I will at least make the attempt to explain to myself the origin of moral evil from the streamy nature of a.s.sociation, which thinking curbs and rudders. Do not the bad pa.s.sions in dreams throw light and show of proof upon this hypothesis? If I can but explain those pa.s.sions I shall gain light, I am sure. A clue! a clue! a Hecatomb a la Pythagoras, if it unlabyrinth me.

[Sidenote: December 28, 1803, 11 o'clock]

I note the beautiful luminous shadow of my pencil-point which follows it from the candle, or rather goes before it and illuminates the word I am writing. But, to resume, take in the blessedness of innocent children, the blessedness of sweet sleep, do they or do they not contradict the argument of evil from streamy a.s.sociations? I hope not, but all is to be thought over and _into_. And what is the height and ideal of mere a.s.sociation? Delirium. But how far is this state produced by pain and denaturalisation? And what are these? In short, as far as I can see anything in this total mist, vice is imperfect yet existing volition, giving diseased currents of a.s.sociation, because it yields on all sides and yet _is_--so, too, think of madness!

[Sidenote: A DOUBTFUL EXPERIMENT]

December 30th, half-past one o'clock, or, rather, Sat.u.r.day morning, December 31st, put rolled bits of paper, many tiny bits of wick, some tallow, and the soap together. The whole flame, equal in size to half-a-dozen candles, did not give the light of one, and the letters of the book looked by the unsteady flare just as through tears or in dizziness--every line of every letter dislocated into angles, or like the mica in crumbly stones.

[Sidenote: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MOTION]

The experiment over leaf ill.u.s.trates my idea of motion, namely, that it is a presence and absence rapidly alternating, so that the fits of _absence_ exist continuously in the feeling, and the fits of presence _vice versa_ continuedly in the eye. Of course I am speaking of motion psychologically, not physically, what it is in us, not what the supposed mundane cause may be. I believe that what we call _motion_ is our consciousness of motion arising from the interruption of motion, the action of the soul in suffering resistance. Free unresisted action, the going forth of the soul, life without consciousness, is, properly, infinite, that is unlimited. For whatever resists limits, and whatever is unresisted is unlimited. This, psychologically speaking, is s.p.a.ce, while the sense of resistance or limitation is time, and motion is a synthesis of the two. The closest approach of time to s.p.a.ce forms co-existent mult.i.tude.

[Sidenote: RECOLLECTION AND REMEMBRANCE]

There is an important distinction between the memory or reminiscent faculty of sensation which young children seem to possess in so small a degree, from their perpetual desire to have a tale repeated to them, and the memory of words and images which the very same children manifestly possess in an unusual degree, even to sealing-wax accuracy of retention and representation.

[Sidenote: THE ETHICS OF SPINOZA]

If Spinoza had left the doctrine of miracles untouched, and had not written so powerfully in support of universal toleration, his ethics would never have brought on him the charge of Atheism. His doctrine, in this respect, is truly and severely orthodox, in the reformed Church; neither do I know that the Church of Rome has authoritatively decided between the Spinosists and Scotists in their great controversy on the nature of the being which creatures possess.

[Sidenote: A UNITARIAN SCHOOLMAN]

Creation is explained by Joannes Scotus Erigena as only a manifestation of the unity of G.o.d in forms--_et fit et facit, et creat et creatur_.

Lib. 4. p. 7.

P. 8. A curious and highly-philosophical account of the Trinity, and completely Unitarian. G.o.d is, is wise, and is living. The essence we call Father, the wisdom Son, the life the Holy Spirit. And he positively affirms that these three exist only as distinguishable relations--_habitudines_; and he states the whole doctrine to be an invention and condescension of Theology to the intellect of man, which must _define_, and consequently _personify_, in order to understand, and must have some phantom of understanding in order to keep alive in the heart the substantial faith. They are _fuel_ to the sacred fire--in the empyrean it may burn without fuel, and they who do so are seraphs.

[Sidenote: A CROWD OF THOUGHTS]

A fine epitheton of man would be "Lord of fire and light." All other creatures whose existence we perceive are mere alms-receivers of both.

A company of children driving a hungry, hard-skinned a.s.s out of a corn-field. The a.s.s cannot by such weaklings be driven so hard but he will feed as he goes.

Such light as lovers love, when the waxing moon steals in behind a black, black cloud, emerging soon enough to make the blush visible which the long kiss had kindled.

All notions [remain] hushed in the phantasms of place and time that still escape the finest sieve and most searching winnow of our reason and abstraction.

A rosemary tree, large as a timber tree, is a sweet sign of the antiquity and antique manners of the house against which it groweth.

"Rosemary" (says Parkinson, _Theatrum Botanic.u.m_ [London, 1640] p. 76) "is a herb of as great use with us in these days as any whatsoever, not only for physical but civil purposes--the civil uses, as all know, are at weddings, funerals, &c., to bestow on friends."

Great harm is done by bad poets in trivialising beautiful expressions and images and a.s.sociating disgust and indifference with the technical forms of poetry.

Advantage of public schools. [They teach men to be] content with school praise when they publish. Apply this to Cottle and J. Jennings.

Religious slang operates better on women than on men. N.B.--Why? I will give over--it is not _tanti_!

Poem. Ghost of a mountain--the forms, seizing my body as I pa.s.sed, became realities--I a ghost, till I had reconquered my substance.

The sopha of sods. Lack-wit and the clock find him at last in the Yorks.h.i.+re cave, where the waterfall is.

[The reference is, no doubt, to Wordsworth's "Idiot Boy," which was composed at Nether Stowey, in 1798. In a letter addressed to John Wilson of June 5, 1802, Wordsworth discusses and discards the use of the word "lackwit" as an equivalent to "idiot." The "Sopha of Sods" was on Latrigg. In her journal for August, 1800, Dorothy Wordsworth records the making of a seat on Windybrow, a part of Latrigg. Possibly this was the "Sopha of Sods."--_Life of W. Wordsworth_, 1889, i. 268, 403.]