THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHY OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHY OF

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

by Janusz Aleksander Sysak

Submitted in total fulfillment of the requirements

of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

March 2000.

Department of History and

Philosophy of Science,

The University of Melbourne.

p.2

ABSTRACT

This thesis aims to show that Coleridge's thinking about science

was inseparable from and influenced by his social and political

concerns. During his lifetime, science was undergoing a major

transition from mechanistic to dynamical modes of explanation.

Coleridge's views on natural philosophy reflect this change. As

a young man, in the mid-1790s, he embraced the mechanistic

philosophy of Necessitarianism, especially in his psychology. In

the early 1800s, however, he began to condemn the ideas to which

he had previously been attracted. While there were technical,

philosophical and religious reasons for this turnabout, there

were also major political ones. For he repeatedly complained

that the prevailing 'mechanical philosophy' of the period

bolstered emerging liberal and Utilitarian philosophies based

ultimately on self-interest. To combat the 'commercial' ideology

of early nineteenth century Britain, he accordingly advocated an

alternative, 'dynamic' view of nature, derived from German

Idealism. I argue that Coleridge championed this 'dynamic

philosophy' because it sustained his own conservative politics,

grounded ultimately on the view that states possess an intrinsic

unity, so are not the product of individualistic self-interest.

p.3

This is to certify that:

(i) the thesis comprises only my original work;

(ii) due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other

material used;

(iii) the thesis is less than 100,000 words in length, exclusive

of tables, maps, bibliographies, appendices and footnotes.

p.4

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Keith

Hutchison, for his continual encouragement, abiding patience, and

scholarly example. His enthusiasm and interest in this project

has been immeasurably helpful, and I have learnt much from him

for which I am indebted.

I am also grateful to the Department of History and Philosophy of

Science at the University of Melbourne for its support throughout

the writing and research of this thesis. On top of the material

facilities it made available, the HPS Department provided a

stimulating and congenial environment for doctoral study.

I would also like to acknowledge the Australian government for a

scholarship provided in the initial years of research.

An expression of gratitude is due to all the other people - HPS

staff, fellow students, friends, and colleagues - who have been

supportive and taken an interest in my doctoral labours.

Finally, very special thanks must be given to my family for their

unwavering encouragement and moral support throughout the thesis.

p.5

CONTENTS

ABBREVIATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

CHAPTER I: THE 'COMPLEAT NECESSITARIAN'. YOUNG COLERIDGE AND

MECHANISTIC SCIENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

I.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

I.2 Cambridge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

I.3 Necessitarianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

I.4 The Moral and Political Agenda of Mechanistic

Necessitarianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

I.5 Mechanistic Necessitarianism and the Politics of Reason 32

I.6 Unitarian Hostility to Church and State . . . . . . . . 41

I.7 The 'Patriot Sages' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

I.8 'Transfer[ring] the Proofs' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

CHAPTER II: 'JACOBIN SCIENCE'— SCIENTIFIC POLITICS IN LATE

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

II.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

II.2 The 'Modern Sages' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

II.3 The Establishment Assault on 'Jacobin Science' . . . . 83

II.4 Coleridge's Change of Heart . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

CHAPTER III: 'COMMERCIAL G. BRITAIN'— COLERIDGE'S OBJECTIONS TO THE

MECHANICAL PHILOSOPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

III.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

III.2 Reductionistic Sensationalism . . . . . . . . . . . 127

III.3 The Politics of Innate Ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

III.4 Coleridge's 'Platonic Old England' . . . . . . . . . 140

III.5 'Commercial G. Britain' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

p.6

III.6 'Epicurean' Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

III.7 The Distinction between the Reason and the Understanding

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166

III.8 The 'Lay Sermons' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

III.9 The Mechanical State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

CHAPTER IV: 'AN ACT OR POWER' IN MATTER AND SPIRIT— DYNAMISM AND

IDEALISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196

IV.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196

IV.2 The Young Coleridge, 'Monads' and Pantheism . . . . 201

IV.3 Dynamism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210

IV.4 Idealism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215

IV.5 Naturphilosophie and the Fundamental Characteristics of

the External World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224

IV.6 Dynamic Chemistry and Physiology in Britain . . . . 231

IV.7 Coleridge's Dynamic Theory of Life . . . . . . . . . 243

CHAPTER V: 'PRESERVING THE METHOD OF NATURE IN THE CONDUCT OF THE

STATE'— COLERIDGE'S DYNAMIC POLITICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254

V.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254

V.2 Coleridge's 'Essays on Method' . . . . . . . . . . . 257

V.3 The Politics of Idealism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260

V.4 The Idealist Elite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265

V.5 'Polar' Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270

V.6 The Organic State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292

WORKS CITED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294

p.7

ABBREVIATIONS

Abbreviated titles are used throughout the footnotes in the

thesis and in most cases will be intelligible to the reader

without even consulting the list of works cited. However, those

that may not be obvious even after consulting the works cited

are:

CC - The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. General

editor, Kathleen Coburn. Bollingen Series 75. London and

Princeton, NJ: Routledge and Kegan Paul (Routledge, in more

recent volumes) and Princeton University Press, 1969 - .

CL - Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edited by

Earl Leslie Griggs. 6 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956-71.

CN - The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edited by

Kathleen Coburn. 3 vols. Bollingen Series 50. Vols. 1 and 2.

New York: Pantheon Books, 1957, 1961. Vol. 3. Princeton, N.J.:

Princeton University Press, 1973.

PL - The Philosophical Lectures of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Edited by Kathleen Coburn. London: Pilot Press, 1949.

PW - The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1912.

NOTE ON SPELLING. I have chosen not to correct the occasionally

idiosyncratic spelling used in primary sources.

p.8

INTRODUCTION

That the author of 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' and the

Biographia Literaria had a keen interest in science surprises

many who know of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) primarily as

a poet and literary critic. This is despite the fact that even

in his poetry and literary criticism there are frequent

references to science. In his own day Coleridge was certainly

viewed as much more than a poet. For one thing, he was famous as

a political journalist and had helped bring about significant

increases in the circulation of leading newspapers. He also

wrote prominent treatises of a religious and political nature,

and gave well-attended lectures on the history of philosophy.

Again, interspersed through all of this were comments and

reflections on science, revealing a deep interest in and

knowledge of contemporary scientific developments.

Although Coleridge did not publish any separate exposition of

his scientific thought during his lifetime, there is a

substantial amount of published and unpublished material of

interest to the scientific historian. Yet, relatively little has

been written on Coleridge's thinking about science. Recently,

some major investigations have partly remedied this omission. In

particular, Trevor Levere's Poetry Realized in Nature: Samuel

Taylor Coleridge and Early Nineteenth-Century Science (1981)

reveals the huge breadth and depth of Coleridge's scientific

knowledge. Levere shows that Coleridge was conversant with the

many of the latest developments in physics, chemistry, geology

and natural history, and that he kept up an active dialogue about

these developments with important scientific figures in early

nineteenth-century Britain such as Humphry Davy and Joseph Henry

Green. Levere also examines in detail the large number of German

scientific and philosophical sources that informed Coleridge's

'dynamic' natural philosophy. Poetry Realized in Nature thus

p.9Introduction p.9

1 The fruitfulness of relating Coleridge's science to his politicalmotivations has been suggested by Bloor in a review essay of Levere'sPoetry Realized in Nature. See Bloor, 'Coleridge's Moral Copula'.

offers an invaluable account of the contemporary intellectual

context of the mature Coleridge's thinking about science.

Coleridge's earlier views on science (in the mid-1790s) form

the focus of Ian Wylie's more recent Young Coleridge and the

Philosophers of Nature (1989). One particular virtue of this

study is that it elucidates the young poet's thought not only

through the natural philosophical sources he read, but also in

the light of his theological and political preoccupations. This

is a fruitful approach, for we shall discover that there is ample

evidence to demonstrate that Coleridge consistently viewed

science as essentially tied to these other realms of inquiry.

The main aim of this thesis, indeed, is to show that

throughout his life, Coleridge's thinking about science was

inseparable from his social and political concerns.(1) The thesis

thus takes an approach to Coleridge's thought that is informed by

a recent tendency in the historiography to view science as

influenced not only by intellectual considerations, but also by

the socio-political context within which scientific ideas evolve.

In Coleridge's case there is a particularly obvious reason for

adopting such an approach. For he repeatedly claimed that the

mechanistic science of his time sustained emerging liberal and

Utilitarian ideologies, and offered his own sociologically

oriented analysis of this science's success. While he provided

no similar analysis of his own preference for an alternative,

dynamic philosophy, we shall see that he and others used such a

philosophy to support a conservative model of the state.

The thesis proceeds chronologically, so as to obtain a sense

not only of the development of Coleridge's thought, its

discontinuities, but also of important continuities. The first

p.10Introduction p.10

chapter canvasses the young Coleridge's thinking about science in

the mid-1790s, the period discussed in Wylie's Young Coleridge.

The focus here, however, is different. For what is pivotal, I

argue, in Coleridge's early scientific and social thought was the

philosophical perspective of Necessitarianism that he embraced

while a student at Cambridge. Necessitarianism was grounded in

an intelligible, mechanistic view of nature, and it was this

rational approach to phenomena, especially as applied to

psychology, that was attractive to the young Coleridge. We shall

see that mechanistic Necessitarianism provided him and others

with a framework for challenging those who defended the old

social hierarchy by appeals to tradition and religion.

The following chapter pursues this political dimension of

natural philosophy in the thought of Coleridge and some of his

contemporaries during the 1790s and early 1800s. Science in

Britain during this period was distinctly affected by political

tensions surrounding the French Revolution and its aftermath.

Notable scientific figures admired by Coleridge - such as Joseph

Priestley and Erasmus Darwin - and the young poet himself, were

censured as Jacobins (after the radical French faction led by

Robespierre) and accused of attempting to tear apart the fabric

of society. However, it was not only the politics of these

'Jacobin' scientists that the authorities condemned as

subversive, but their scientific views as well. We shall examine

various reasons why this 'Jacobin science' was perceived as a

threat by those in power. The chapter will also explore a

gradual, yet noticeable, change in Coleridge's politics at the

end of the 1790s. This period is a complex one in Coleridge's

thought, and it is difficult at times to ascertain his position

in the polarized politics and science of the period. In the

early 1800s, however, his views become decidedly conservative.

Significantly, we shall see that this political change of heart


was followed by a new hostility to the natural philosophies he

had earlier championed.

The causes of Coleridge's growing animosity to the scientific

ideas of figures he once admired are investigated in detail in

Chapter III. From 1800, he increasingly attacked these ideas as

ingredients in a more general, mechanical philosophy. While some

of his criticisms were technical, many more were aimed at what he

alleged were this philosophy's religious, moral and political

implications. In particular, he argued that mechanism gave

immense credibility to a sensationalist epistemology that was

being used to justify a liberal capitalist ideology based on

self-interest. The mechanical philosophy, he complained, served

as a scientific legitimation for the new individualistic

political orientation of a 'Commercial G. Britain'. Coleridge

publicly lamented this state of affairs and repeatedly warned his

contemporaries about the subtle ways in which mechanistic science

was undermining the traditional structure of British society.

His remedy for what he perceived as Britain's religious,

moral and political degeneration was an alternative, dynamic or

force-based science, derived immediately from the

Naturphilosophie of the German thinker, Schelling. This dynamic

science is canvassed in Chapter IV. As indicated above, a

detailed account of the contemporary intellectual sources of

Coleridge's dynamic philosophy has been provided by Levere. The

principal aims here are different. One purpose of this chapter

is to show that Coleridge's mature espousal of dynamism was not

such a novel development in his thought. For, as early as the

mid-1790s, he held a view of nature as fundamentally active, in

contrast to a mechanistic, static picture of matter. At that

time, he was drawn to a pantheistic conception of nature as well

as to Priestley's dynamic physics. We shall note that his

subsequent condemnation of both pantheism and Priestley is best


explained as a function of his changing political allegiances.

Another important continuity in Coleridge's thought to be

examined here was his predilection for idealist philosophies.

Such philosophies, which emphasized the mind's activity in

structuring experience, were opposed to mechanistic ones that

treated the mind as passively formed by external sensations. We

shall observe that the mature Coleridge's dynamic view of the

mind underpinned his dynamic natural philosophy and his

conservative politics.

The final chapter specifically explores the political

dimension of Coleridge's dynamic philosophy. His public advocacy

of this philosophy began in the economically and politically

volatile period in Britain following the Napoleonic wars. Time

and again, he insisted that it was vital for Britain's ruling

classes to take heed of the political effects of the prevailing

mechanistic science and to counter these by endorsing a dynamic

physics. But how could such a physics bolster the conservative

politics the mature Coleridge deemed crucial for the nation's

well-being? We shall see that it did so in two main ways.

Firstly, the empirical success of Schelling's dynamic

Naturphilosophie sanctioned the application of its idealist

epistemology in other, non-scientific domains, especially in

politics. Coleridge's defence of the traditional social order is

in fact thoroughly informed by such an idealist epistemology.

The second way in which dynamism supported Coleridge's

conservative politics was through its ontology. For Coleridge,

along with others, argued that the fundamental principles of

nature were the same as those that operate in human societies.

So, if material objects possessed a dynamic principle of unity,

states too ought to possess an inherent tendency to unity, so

were not the product of individualistic self-interest. The

social hierarchy, then, must be respected, and political power

must not be allowed to pass down to the lower social orders. The


mature Coleridge's dynamic natural philosophy thus buttressed his

conservative conception of the state.

p.14

2 See, for example, Coleridge's note to lines from his poem, 'TheDestiny of Nations', in PW,1, p. 140. Here he commented, 'These arevery fine Lines, tho' I say it ... but, hang me, if I know or everdid know the meaning of them ...'.

3 Piper, Active Universe, pp. 16-59.

CHAPTER I: THE 'COMPLEAT NECESSITARIAN'.

YOUNG COLERIDGE AND MECHANISTIC SCIENCE

I.1 Introduction

Coleridge's early thought has been quite extensively

commented upon. It is well-known, for instance, that during the

mid-1790s, the budding young poet enthusiastically took up

radical politics, was converted to Unitarian Christianity and

briefly embraced a philosophical outlook referred to as

'Necessitarianism' or 'Necessarianism'. His growing interest in

natural philosophy at this time is also familiar to Coleridge

scholars, but has received comparatively little attention. This

is partly due to the elliptical quality of some of his important

statements on the subject, and also to the fact that they are

often buried in (what he himself later acknowledged to be)

occasionally unfathomable poetry.(2) These have made it difficult

to arrive at a clear understanding of the young poet's thinking

about natural philosophy.

One fruitful way of deciphering Coleridge's comments on

natural philosophy has been to investigate the sources, both

intellectual and social, from which they were drawn.

Groundbreaking work in this direction was carried out in Piper's

Active Universe (1962). There, Coleridge's early thinking on

nature was traced to a pantheistic current of ideas that had

found its way from the French Enlightenment into Coleridge's

intellectual milieu.(3) Since then, however, new comprehensive

editions of the public lectures and journalism of the mid-1790s

have revealed a much wider range of direct and local influences

Ch.I: The 'Compleat Necessitarian' p.15

on the young philosopher of nature. More recently, a major

investigation of the natural philosophical sources that inspired

Coleridge's early pronouncements in verse, letters, notes and

lectures has been undertaken by Wylie in Young Coleridge and the

Philosophers of Nature (1989). This study not only discusses the

natural philosophical literature that informed Coleridge's own

views, but also rightly relates Coleridge's interest in this

literature to the broader religious and political questions that

concerned him. This is appropriate, because (as we shall see

below) the scientific contemporaries of Coleridge who had the

greatest impact on his thought saw their science as having an

important bearing on such questions.

I shall, however, argue that it was not so much this science

as a more general philosophical programme attached to it that

most affected Coleridge's views on theology and politics in this

period. This was the eighteenth-century philosophy of

'Necessitarianism', the ideological significance of which for the

young Coleridge has been generally underestimated by

commentators. In the present chapter, I shall explain and

examine this philosophy, and shall argue that it provided the

common framework for Coleridge's early thinking on both natural

and social philosophies. His belief that natural philosophy

supported a Necessitarian perspective reveals to us, therefore,

the unequivocal political commitments in his views on nature.

The relevant period in Coleridge's life that will be

canvassed here extends from 1792, just after he had gone up to

Cambridge at the age of nineteen, to the time he was living in or

near Bristol in the years 1795-96. This chapter will thus begin

with Coleridge at Jesus College, Cambridge, and will examine in

particular the influence on him there of the Unitarian and

political radical, William Frend. The chapter will go on to

describe the philosophy of Necessitarianism, as expressed by two

major eighteenth-century thinkers who were introduced to


Coleridge at Cambridge - the physician and psychological

theorist, David Hartley (1705-1757), and the natural philosopher,

political radical and Unitarian theologian, Joseph Priestley

(1733-1804). Their grounding of Necessitarianism in a

mechanistic view of nature and its application to an

understanding of human psychology will be explained. The moral

implications of this Necessitarian psychology will then be

discussed. Eighteenth-century Necessitarians argued that a

'moral sense' was not innate but the product of the environment

alone, and they believed that this fact could be established

through an investigation of human psychology. In the following

section, the broader political implications of Necessitarianism

will be examined. The mechanistic framework of this philosophy,

I shall argue, served to undermine tradition as a basis for

authority, by requiring rational, intelligible explanations for

all, and not just material, phenomena. We shall then see that

attacks on the British Establishment by Priestley and the young

Coleridge were informed by this insistence on rationality in all

spheres of inquiry.

The chapter's final two sections will indicate the central

role Coleridge attributed to natural philosophy in bringing about

social change. This 'moral' function of natural philosophy

operated in two ways. Firstly, discoveries by scientists like

Newton and Franklin could be harnessed to materially improving

social conditions. Secondly, and more importantly for Coleridge,

natural philosophy provided a way of understanding the

fundamental mechanistic principles that governed not only matter,

but the human sphere as well.

Curiously, both these 'moral' functions of natural philosophy

were expressed by the young Coleridge in terms of a millenarian

optimism, largely derived from Hartley and Priestley. The

Millenium, Coleridge thought, was being expedited by recent

developments in the sciences. But its imminent arrival urgently


4 CL,1, p.20: to George Coleridge, 24 January 1792.

required a deeper understanding of the 'book of nature', so that

all should know how God wished them to act. In subsequent

chapters we shall see that this belief - that knowledge of nature

gave one special insight into social questions - informed

Coleridge's thinking about natural philosophy throughout his

life.

I.2 Cambridge

In a 1792 letter written to his brother, George, soon after

taking up residence at Jesus College, Cambridge, Coleridge

mentioned that he was enjoying the acquaintance of one of the

College Fellows, William Frend. He went on in the same paragraph

to indicate that his religious views were now unconventional,

saying that he was cautious about publicly criticizing 'that

gluttony of Faith waggishly yclept Orthodoxy.'(4) This link with

Frend is important, for the latter's heterodox opinions in both

religion and politics were widely known at Cambridge, and were

rapidly earning him the hostility of the university authorities.

Coleridge, it seems, was coming to embrace Frend's dangerous

views.

The decade of the 1790s, however, was not a good time for

expressing opinions that were unfavourable to the religious and

political Establishments. The 1789 Revolution and subsequent

events in France caused considerable concern to the British

authorities who feared the gallic example would encourage

insurrection at home. Early in 1793, indeed, following the

execution of Louis XVI, Britain joined in the war against the

newly formed French Republic. Frend publicly opposed the war and

even went so far as to express his support for the French

Revolution and for British political reform. Not surprisingly,


5 On Coleridge's Cambridge years and Frend, see Roe, Radical Years,pp. 84-117. See also: Knight, University Rebel, pp. 118-19, 140-1,143, 214-15; Gascoigne, Cambridge, pp. 226-33. That Coleridge wasprobably still in close contact with Frend for some time after isindicated by a letter included in Coleridge's 1796 periodical, TheWatchman, which is signed F-D and deals specifically with the repealof the quasi-feudal Game Laws, a subject broached by Frend in aprevious publication. Frend's letter attacked the exclusiveprerogative of the wealthy to hunt game. It pointed to the problemsfor farmers of having their land destroyed by animals that they werelegally prevented from killing, and to the social consequences of theover-harsh penalties for poaching. CC,2, pp. 172-4, and the editor'snote on p. 173.

6 See: Watts, The Dissenters, p. 371 et. seq.; Wiles, ArchetypalHeresy, passim, but esp. pp. 68-9; Wilbur, History of Unitarianism,pp. 236-315. On Frend's reputation as a Socinian, see Gascoigne,Cambridge, p. 227. Both Isaac Newton and Samuel Clarke also heldviews that could be considered Unitarian. See Wiles, ArchetypalHeresy, pp. 77-93, 110-34. On the Unitarians' emphasis on an

(continued...)

his indifference to the ruling class's sensibilities saw him

dismissed from Cambridge in 1793. The Jesus students loyal to

Frend attended his university trial, and, according to one

account, Coleridge was conspicuously boisterous during the

proceedings.(5)

Frend's influence on the young Coleridge is particularly

apparent at this time in the latter's well-known conversion to

the Unitarianism espoused by Frend. Unitarianism was a

Nonconformist sect which, as the name implies, rejected the

mystery of the Trinity - the belief in a triune God - thereby

defying the authority of the established Anglican Church. Some

Unitarians, such as Frend, were referred to as Socinians, the

rationally inclined sect named after the sixteenth-century

Italian Unitarian, Fausto Sozzini. They tended to hold a radical

view that Christ was merely human and did not in any way partake

in divinity. Other Unitarians adopted a more moderate, Arian

position on the Trinity, arguing that, while Christ was not

consubstantial with God the Father, he nonetheless had a divine

status and had existed before the creation. Unitarians were

especially noted for the importance they attached to a rational

interpretation of the Bible.(6) Coleridge's adoption of this


6(...continued)informed reading of Scripture, see Shaffer, 'Kubla Khan', pp. 7,24-7, 33, 231-2.

7 Everest notes that Coleridge's immediate family of clergymen,schoolmasters and soldiers must have been sadly puzzled by hisearly, unorthodox behaviour. Everest, Coleridge's Secret Ministry,pp. 118-19.

8 See Wylie, Young Coleridge, p. 55. Katherine Cooke adds thatColeridge also would have found the university curriculum narrow andunchallenging, geared chiefly as it was to providing suitablecandidates for country parsonages. Unitarianism, on the other hand,provided an intellectually stimulating milieu, through its rigorousinterrogation of religious orthodoxy. Cooke, Coleridge, pp. 12-13.

9 See: Goodwin, Friends of Liberty, pp. 65-98; Holt, UnitarianContribution, passim. This political and socio-economic pattern was

(continued...)

unorthodox creed was a significant move for the young Cambridge

undergraduate, as a university degree was generally seen to be a

predictable step on the way to fulfilling one of the traditional

roles of sons of country gentlemen, and becoming an Anglican

clergyman. Young Samuel, however, decided to risk his family's

disapproval and the socio-economic uncertainties attendant upon

rejecting a privileged status.(7) In late 1794 he left Cambridge

without taking his degree. This may well have been because of

the scruples he now had regarding the compulsory allegiance

required of degree candidates to the established Church's 39

articles.(8)

Coleridge's change of creed, however, also had political

implications. For to be a Unitarian in late eighteenth-century

Britain did not just mean one took a particular view on

Scriptural exegesis. It meant also, if one's Unitarianism were

declared, to be legally barred by the seventeenth-century Test

and Corporation Acts from holding public office and from entering

university, and it therefore meant most certainly to be in favour

of constitutional reform. By virtue of formal exclusion from the

religious and political Establishments it also often implied

that, if one had means, one was probably a member of the new

middle classes, earning a living from trade or manufacture.(9)


9(...continued)of course also characteristic of other religious sects, such as theQuakers, who dissented from Anglican orthodoxy. Both the CorporationAct (1661) and the Test Act (1673) required office holders to declaretheir allegiance to the Church of England and receive its Communion.These acts were repealed only in 1828. Wilbur, History ofUnitarianism, vol. 2, pp. 209-10, 353.

10 Holmes, Early Visions, pp. 95-6; Deschamps, Pensée de Coleridge,p. 317.

11 CC,1, p. 226.

After his departure from Cambridge, Coleridge moved to

Bristol where he soon befriended members of that city's

prosperous middle-class Unitarian community.(10) While sharing

the Unitarians' religious and political sympathies, however, it

is important to note that Coleridge did not embrace their

commercial aspirations. This is evident from some 1795 public

lectures he gave in Bristol on religious and political subjects.

In these he argued that trade, manufacture and private property

corrupted human beings and were inconsistent with Christianity.

'Jesus Christ', he claimed, 'forbids to his disciples all

property - and teaches us that accumulation was incompatible with

their Salvation'.(11) The young Coleridge's position, therefore,

was opposed to that of many Unitarians.

Through the Unitarian circles he began to mix in at

Cambridge, Coleridge was introduced to the ideas of two thinkers

whose profound impact on his early views is legendary in

Coleridge scholarship: David Hartley and Joseph Priestley. The

latter was intimate with Frend and shared the same political

convictions and theological persuasion. Indeed, Priestley was

the most prominent British Unitarian of the second half of the

eighteenth century, defending his religious position in numerous

works dealing with questions of theology and natural philosophy.

These were doubtless discussed in the Unitarian milieu of Jesus

College in the early 1790s, especially as Priestley, like Frend,

had gained considerable notoriety for his pro-revolutionary

pronouncements.


12 Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 9, p. 67, s.v. 'Hartley'.

13 See: McEvoy and McGuire, 'God and Nature', pp. 348-57; McEvoy,'Electricity, Knowledge', p. 7.

14 This paragraph and the following one are based on: Priestley,Philosophical Necessity Illustrated, pp. 1-19; Willey, Eighteenth-Century Background, pp. 147-9, 171-4; Taylor, 'Determinism',pp. 363-7.

David Hartley's role in eighteenth-century Unitarianism is

less direct. He too had studied at Jesus College, and, although

not a professed Dissenter, he declined ordination because of

private reservations regarding the Church's articles.(12) His

magnum opus, the 1749 Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty,

and His Expectations, was made popular through an abridged

edition put out by Priestley in 1775. In Hartley's system,

Priestley found support for his own philosophical views. So,

shortly after his re-edition of the Observations, Priestley

incorporated Hartley's ideas into two of his most controversial

works, both published in 1777: Disquisitions relating to Matter

and Spirit and The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity

Illustrated.(13) As these works were intended as a philosophical

justification of Priestley's Christianity, it is obvious why

Hartley, though not a Unitarian himself, came to be seen as an

important thinker in Unitarian circles. Coleridge's early

interest in Hartley thus coincided with his espousal of

Unitarianism and the philosophical stance of Necessitarianism

defended by both Hartley and Priestley.

I.3 Necessitarianism

Necessitarianism was a deterministic philosophy, that is, it

regarded any present state of events in the world as having only

one possible succeeding state.(14) Any succeeding state of

events, then, could in principle be reliably predicted, as long

as all the data concerning a present state and the laws


15 CC,9, p. 139. Cf. Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, pp. 36, 59-60, 79.

16 See, for example: Hartley, Observations, pp. 267, 500, 504;Priestley, Disquisitions (1777), p. 356.

17 Oddly, the belief that classical mechanics is always deterministic isquite false. See Hutchison, 'Classical Mechanics', esp. pp. 319-22.

underlying the behaviour of phenomena were known - and it was

also believed that these could be known. That the material world

functioned in such a predictable fashion was taken for granted by

Hartley, Priestley and many others. They further insisted,

however, that human psychology was also deterministic. Any

thought or action, they claimed, was the necessary or inescapable

outcome of a prior psychological state plus external influences.

Their Necessitarianism in fact focussed almost wholly on this

psychological determinism, although both thinkers saw the latter

as closely linked to determinism in the material world.

Coleridge much later defined Necessitarianism as a belief 'that

motives act on the Will, as bodies act on bodies; and that

whether mind and matter are essentially the same or essentially

different, they are both alike under one and the same law of

compulsory Causation.'(15) Indeed, in order to justify their view

of mental events, both Hartley and Priestley invoked the new

mechanistic science which they saw as supporting a deterministic

model of nature.(16) For this science had successfully described

a world that appeared to operate with machine-like regularity.

The celestial bodies, for example, seemed to be restricted to

tracing out predetermined paths: they could conceivably follow no

other motion than that predicted for them by mathematical

calculations based on theory and observation.(17)

The determinism of physical and mental phenomena, however,

had serious implications, particularly in the areas of theology

and ethics. If every occurrence was the inevitable product of a

previous physical or mental state, the course of events could

seemingly be altered neither by the agency of God nor by the


18 CL,1, pp. 137, 147: to Robert Southey: 11 December 1794; 29 December1794.

human will. Providence and human free will were thus meaningless

in a radically deterministic universe. Hartley and Priestley,

however, considered there to be no contradiction between

Necessitarianism and Christianity, and believed that there were

immense disadvantages in an indeterministic conception of free

will. Yet, as we shall discover in a later section of this

chapter, these disadvantages were not so much theological as

political.

Coleridge's enthusiasm for the Necessitarianism of Hartley

and Priestley and its mechanistic underpinning is found in some

letters of late 1794 to his friend, Robert Southey. In one of

these, Coleridge confidently announced, 'I am a compleat

Necessitarian and understand the subject as well almost as

Hartley himself - but I go farther than Hartley and believe the

corporeality of thought - namely, that it is motion'. A slightly

later letter to Southey reveals that at this time Coleridge spoke

of himself as 'a Unitarian Christian' and - in the light of his

new-found Necessitarian beliefs - 'an Advocate for the Automatism

of Man.'(18)

As these statements indicate, Coleridge's contact with the

Necessitarianism of Hartley and Priestley had inspired him to

tackle some major philosophical questions. What, for instance,

was the nature of mind and matter, and were human beings subject

to the same mechanical laws that philosophers had found in

inanimate nature? Such issues were important ones in the

eighteenth century and, as we shall see, they too had a

significant bearing on theological and political concerns.

Answers to them, however, were increasingly seen as dependent on

theoretical developments in the sciences. Both Hartley and

Priestley had sought solutions to such problems in natural


19 Hartley, Observations, vol. 1, p. 6. Cf. Newton, MathematicalPrinciples pp. xvii-xviii, xx-xxi.

20 CL,2, p. 686: to Josiah Wedgwood, 24 February 1801. See also CC,7,vol. 1, p. 92.

philosophy, and this was one of the attractions for Coleridge in

their thought.

Hartley's work, especially, appeared to demonstrate the value

in using the approach and findings of natural philosophy. Its

aim, as is well-known, was to provide a rational explanation of

Christian morality, and in order to do this Hartley expressly

adopted the empirical, analytical method of Newtonian physics.

Toward the beginning of his Observations, he wrote, in obvious

mimicry of Newton,(19)

The proper Method of Philosophizing seems to be, todiscover and establish the general Laws of Action,affecting the Subject under Consideration, from certainselect, well-defined, and well-attested Phaenomena, andthen to explain and predict the other Phaenomena by theseLaws. This is the Method of Analysis and Synthesisrecommended and followed by Sir Isaac Newton.

The phenomena that Hartley was particularly interested in

explaining and predicting were psychological. Just as natural

philosophers had tried to demonstrate that a wide variety of

physical events were deducible from several fundamental laws of

nature, Hartley hoped to show that the universal precepts of

morality and religion were due to a small number of psychological

principles. His apparent success in this enterprise is attested

by Coleridge in a letter of 1801. The explanatory potential

revealed by Hartley of the psychological notion of the

'association of ideas', Coleridge felt, was comparable to that of

Newton's law of gravitation. Thus, while 'neither N[ewton] nor

H[artley] discovered the Law ... both taught & first taught, the

way to apply it universally.'(20)


21 Newton, Opticks, pp. 345-47, 353.

22 Hartley, Observations, vol. 1, pp. 7-34, 511-12. On the Newtonianinspiration for Hartley's views, see Smith, 'Hartley's NewtonianNeuropsychology'.

Hartley's use of Newton's model, however, went beyond simply

imitating its scientific methodology. Although his psycho-

ethical conclusions were argued in detail and empirically

supported, they could be even more persuasive if underpinned by a

mechanical explanation of sensory transmission in the body's

nervous system, such as that sketched by Newton. In the Queries

to the Opticks, Newton had suggested that sensations were

communicated to the brain by means of vibrations of infinitesimal

particles in an aetherial fluid in the body's nervous system.(21)

Hartley found this hypothesis persuasive and developed it at

length in the first part of the Observations. He strongly

suggested, moreover, that the vibrations of this fluid in the

brain might be the source of mental processes. However, the

possibility that such a notion could be interpreted as endorsing

a materialistic view of the mind worried the theologically

correct Hartley, and he insisted that his system could easily

dispense with it. A causal nexus between matter and mind, he

claimed, had been assumed strictly 'in order to make farther

Inquiries,' and should not be viewed as 'supposing Matter to be

endued with Sensation' or 'so as to oppose the Immateriality of

the Soul.'(22) Nonetheless, his elaboration of Newton's aetherial

hypothesis was subsequently taken to be an important attempt to

explain the perennial puzzle of mind-body interaction, and it was

this aspect of Hartley's work that particularly attracted the

young Coleridge. In 'Religious Musings', a major early poem

written soon after he left Cambridge, Coleridge's admiration for

Hartley's vibrationary theory was unreserved. Here, Hartley was

portrayed as 'he of mortal kind/ Wisest, he first who marked the


23 'Religious Musings', ll. 368-70, PW,1, p. 123.

24 Nevertheless, some of Hartley's statements definitely tended towardsuch a monistic conclusion, thus undermining his pretence totheological orthodoxy. He wrote, for instance, that his theoryentailed 'that Matter, if it could be endued with the most simpleKinds of Sensation, might also arrive at all that Intelligence ofwhich the human Mind is possessed'. Also doctrinally suspect was hisadmission that 'the Immateriality of the Soul has little or noConnexion with its Immortality'. Hartley, Observations, vol. 1,pp. 511-12. One might surmise that Hartley did not have any problempersonally with the notion that thought was produced by a materiallyconstituted brain. He would not after all have been obliged toassume that God too was material. It was impolitic, however, topublicly admit that matter manifested the active propertiestraditionally reserved for spirit. Priestley pursued the course thatHartley could have taken, and made God distinct from an ontologicallyhomogeneous world of active matter/spirit, but this, as we shalllater see, failed to appease his opponents.

ideal tribes/ Up the fine fibres through the sentient

brain ... '.(23)

Yet as the statements to Southey quoted above (p. 21)

indicate, Coleridge was convinced that Hartley's

psychophysiological speculations had not gone far enough. He

rejected the latter's dualistic scruples and appeared to think

that the mind actually shared the attributes of extension and

motion that seventeenth-century mechanical philosophers had

assigned to matter alone. This conviction that spirit and matter

were ontologically equivalent probably derived from Priestley who

had advocated a radically monistic solution to the problem of

spirit-matter interaction.(24)

In his Disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit, Priestley

argued that there was in fact no good reason for continuing to

treat mind and body as ontologically distinct, as Descartes and

others had done. Experimental evidence demonstrated, he

maintained, that the 'material' universe was not made up of the

extended, impenetrable particles of matter posited by Cartesian

mechanical philosophy, but of immaterial forces of attraction and

repulsion that were neither solid nor extended. This, he

claimed, had been convincingly explained by the Jesuit natural


25 Priestley, Disquisitions (1777), pp. 11-23. See also Boscovich,Theory of Natural Philosophy. Priestley claimed to have metBoscovich in Paris in 1774. Priestley, Works, vol. 10, p. 482.Priestley noted in 1790 that he had earlier known Michell at Leeds,and referred to him as 'the inventor of artificial magnets'. Ibid.,vol. 19, p. 306. Michell's 'A Treatise of Artificial Magnets'appeared in 1750. Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 13, p. 333,s.v. 'Michell'. On Michell's work and ideas and his relationship toBoscovich and Priestley, see Schofield, Mechanism and Materialism,pp. 241-9. Schofield argues that Priestley was probably introducedto Boscovich's theories by Michell. Ibid., p. 242.

26 Priestley, Disquisitions (1777), p. 16.

27 Priestley and Price, Free Discussion, pp. 23, 20. Hartley'sdiscussion of this latter point can be found in Hartley,Observations, vol. 1, pp. 27-30.

philosopher, R. J. Boscovich (1711-1787), and by Priestley's

compatriot, the astronomer, John Michell (1724-1793).(25) But if

the attributes of the 'material' world were like those of the

mechanists' unextended immaterial mind, spirit and matter, as far

as Priestley was concerned, were essentially the same thing:(26)

If I be asked how, upon this hypothesis matter differsfrom spirit, if there be nothing in matter that isproperly solid or impenetrable; I answer, that it no wayconcerns me, or true philosophy, to maintain that thereis any such difference between them as has hitherto beensupposed.

Invoking Ockham's razor, Priestley noted elsewhere that it

was philosophically unsound to treat spirit and matter as

heterogeneous, for this would be 'to multiply substances without

necessity.' As their interaction was widely accepted, he

maintained, it was only logical to assume that spirit affected

matter through the same attractive and repulsive 'power' that was

known to operate in matter itself. Moreover, such a position, he

claimed, had been given support by Hartley who had argued that

phenomena such as gravitation, magnetism, electricity and

cohesion were connected with the very aetherial vibrations that

gave rise to mental processes. 'The relation that attractions

and repulsions bear to several modes of thought,' Priestley

affirmed, 'may be seen in Hartley's Observations on Man.'(27)


28 Hartley, Observations, vol. 1, pp. 2, 56-84. Cf. Locke, Essay, 2.2and 2.12, (pp. 99-100, 132-4).

29 Hartley, Observations, vol. 1, p. 500.

This monistic perspective on nature - curiously described by

Priestley as 'materialism' - seems to be what Coleridge had in

view in his above declaration to Southey. For, if mind shared

the attributes of body, thought could indeed be considered as

corporeal and participating in the force-driven motion that

Boscovich and Michell had posited in the seemingly material

world.

I.4 The Moral and Political Agenda of Mechanistic

Necessitarianism

As already indicated, the psychological Necessitarianism of

Coleridge's mentors, Hartley and Priestley, was modelled on

mechanistic natural philosophy. This mechanistic model was

particularly obvious in the psychophysiological part of Hartley's

system. But it also underpinned his account of human learning.

According to Hartley, learning occurred through the combinations

of ideas which had their original source in sensation. All

knowledge, he claimed, could be traced back through the course of

its development to its earliest individual components: the mental

correlatives of physical sensations. Following Locke, he called

these original ideas, 'ideas of sensation' or 'simple' ideas.

'Complex' or 'intellectual' ideas were subsequently formed

through 'associations' of these 'simple' ideas - a process which

for Hartley corresponded to the repeated spatio-temporal

juxtaposition of sensations.(28) This psychological model was

thoroughly mechanistic and deterministic. For Hartley, all

thought and behaviour could be reliably traced to antecedent

causal states, as he explained:(29)


30 This notion of a moral determinism in Hartley's work is suggested inWilley, Eighteenth-Century Background, pp. 139-47.

31 Locke argued that human behaviour is largely governed by sensationsof pleasure or pain, and that morality is merely a function of thesesensations. See Locke, Essay, 2.20 and 2.21.42, (pp. 159-61, 174).

32 The following account is based on Hartley, Observations, vol. 1,pp. 416-499. See also Willey, Eighteenth-Century Background,pp. 140-6.

by the Mechanism of human Actions I mean, that eachAction results from the previous Circumstances of Bodyand Mind, in the same manner, and with the sameCertainty, as other Effects do from their mechanicalCauses ... .

Coleridge's pronouncement in late 1794 that he was 'an Advocate

for the Automatism of Man' (see above, p. 21) seems to have been

inspired by just such a mechanistic account of human learning.

There was, however, another essential and related feature of

Hartley's system that was most likely also reflected in

Coleridge's claim here. This was an ethical determinism, again

characterized in mechanistic terms, and constituting the central

purpose of Hartley's Necessitarian project.(30) It was based upon

the psychophysiological and epistemological frameworks we have

seen so far, and was heavily dependent upon the sensationalist

psychology of association and a Lockean view of human nature as

being ultimately reducible to pleasure/pain motivations.(31)

Throughout his or her life, Hartley maintained, each human

being undergoes an ethical education, which is the inevitable

product of his or her circumstances. A 'moral sense', he argued,

is the product of the environment alone, and the same environment

should produce the same morality in everybody, in a predictably

mechanistic fashion. This happens in the following way.(32) In

the learning process, a person first of all comes to associate

'simple' or sensible ideas of pleasure or pain with objects in

his or her experience. These sensible associations then undergo

a predictable, almost alchemical, transmutation into six



successive categories or 'classes' of 'intellectual' pleasures

and pains. Moreover, as the individual learns to associate the

'simple' sensations with each new category of 'intellectual'

pleasures and pains, the latter eventually come to be pursued or

avoided for their own sake and not for their original, sensory

associations. To begin with, the sensible pleasures and pains

are associated with intellectual pleasures and pains that have a

similarly self-centred tendency. The first three classes in

Hartley's associational hierarchy exhibit such a tendency. They

are: the pleasures and pains of 'imagination', which derive from

aesthetic and intellectual stimulation; those of 'ambition',

which are connected with the praise or blame given to us by

others; and those of 'self-interest', which are divided into

three kinds according to the proportion of personal and non-

personal benefit gained from their pursuit or avoidance.

Hartley's final three classes then continue the ascent toward

virtue, as the self-interested pleasures and pains are

increasingly associated with altruistic ones: ideas of 'sympathy'

or compassion lead to those of 'theopathy' (concerned with the

love and fear of God) and finally to those of 'the moral sense',

in which the original, self-interested motives are completely

dissolved into a pure love of virtue and hatred of vice. Hartley

believed that this moral trajectory of the individual was natural

and inevitable, for(33)

God has so formed the World, and perhaps ... was obligedby his moral Perfections so to form it, as that Virtuemust have amiable and pleasing Ideas affixed to it; Vice,odious ones. The Moral Sense is therefore generatednecessarily and mechanically.

This, then, was the moral Necessitarianism about which Coleridge

enthusiastically wrote to Southey just after leaving Cambridge.


34 Ibid., p. 82.

But it was not only its implications for the moral life of

the individual that attracted the young 'Advocate for the

Automatism of Man'. For Hartley's Necessitarian framework also

provided a foundation for social and political reform. His

account of the 'mechanism of the human mind', as we have just

seen, was partly aimed at demonstrating that the learning process

ought to lead God's creatures to worship Him and act virtuously

towards one another. When this did not happen it could not be

the result of free will, however, so had to be caused by external

circumstances. The advantage of his system, Hartley felt, was

that it enabled one to understand just where in the associative

mechanism things had gone awry. Misdirected thought or

behaviour, he claimed, could always be corrected by providing the

appropriate associations at points in the learning process. It

was therefore possible for everyone to reach an equal degree of

happiness, through 'a proper Adjustment of the Impressions and

Associations'. One could thus envisage a society where the

mental and moral differences that distinguished the more from the

less fortunate would eventually be eliminated by the right form

of education and government. This was indeed a direct

consequence of Hartley's Necessitarianism:(34)

if Beings of the same Nature ... be exposed for anindefinite Time to the same Impressions and Associations,all their particular Differences will, at last, be over-ruled, and they will become perfectly similar, or evenequal.

The tendency implied here in Hartley's message - to view all

human beings as fundamentally similar, despite their apparent

differences - is a good example of what Lovejoy has called

uniformitarianism. Lovejoy saw such a tendency as the most

important characteristic of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment,

and suggested that it originated in a modern scientific concern


35 Lovejoy, Essays, pp. 79-81.

36 See Hutchison, 'Eclipse of Scholastic Philosophy', pp. 331, 334.

37 See: Halévy, Philosophic Radicalism, pp. 433 et. seq.; Young, Mind,Brain and Adaptation, pp. 94-8.

to find uniformity or regularity in nature.(35) Indeed, such a

concern is apparent in the mechanical philosophy. For an

important aim of this seventeenth-century philosophy was to

explain matter in terms of a minimal number of general laws and

properties, in opposition to a medieval, Aristotelian view of

matter as endowed with a multiplicity of innate, idiosyncratic

qualities. Hartley's mechanistic psychology can be seen as

pursuing this same goal of providing a simpler, more uniform

explanation of human behaviour and doing away with individual,

innate qualities as causal explanations of phenomena. By doing

so, it directly challenged a traditional, hierarchical view of

society based upon a belief in innate qualitative differences.

In the Middle Ages, for instance, nobility was typically viewed

as a quality one is born with.(36) Hartley's psychology implied,

however, that human worth was not innate and idiosyncratic, for

human beings were fundamentally alike and their differences due

to circumstances. Uniformitarianism will be discussed in detail

in the following chapter. There we shall see that opponents of

reform in late eighteenth-century Britain saw egalitarian

doctrines of natural rights as linked to uniformitarianism, and

to uniformitarianism in science in particular.

Hartley's psycho-ethical account of experience was embraced

by prominent advocates of reform such as Priestley, Erasmus

Darwin and William Godwin, and became a corner-stone of

eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Utilitarianism.(37) The

possibility of using it as the framework for an egalitarian

society was also recognized by Coleridge who, in 1794, formed a

project with Southey to set up a Utopian community - a

'Pantisocracy' - in Pennsylvania. Earlier that year, Priestley


38 CL,1, p. 114: to Robert Southey, 21 October 1794. Pantisocracy,however, did not come to fruition, partly because of personaldifferences between Coleridge and Southey, and partly due todisagreement over the form it would take. Southey backed down on theAmerican location, suggested Wales as a more practicable alternative,and seemed no longer to believe in the original, egalitarianprinciples of the venture. He had now come to insist, according toColeridge, that members of the community retain their privatepossessions and that they even have servants. For a lively andinformative account of the whole enterprise, see Holmes, EarlyVisions, pp. 59-100.

had emigrated to America, disenchanted with the increasingly

repressive climate in Britain under the government of William

Pitt. Coleridge and Southey decided to follow Priestley and

establish their own agrarian 'Pantisocracy' not far from where he

had settled. 'Pantisocracy', a term coined by Coleridge from the

Greek, meant government ('cracy') by all ('pan') equally ('iso').

The principles of the projected community were in fact radically

egalitarian: there was to be no distinction in rank and no

private property. The influence on Pantisocracy of Hartley's

Necessitarian view that vice is a function of circumstances is

indicated in a letter Coleridge wrote to Southey later that year.

He reminded Southey that 'the leading Idea of Pantisocracy is to

make men necessarily virtuous by removing all Motives to Evil -

all possible Temptations.'(38)

Across the Atlantic in Pennsylvania - the proposed territory

for Coleridge's Pantisocratic endeavour - the egalitarian

implications of Hartley's system were acknowledged by the well-

known reformer and physician, Benjamin Rush (1745-1813). Rush

whole-heartedly espoused Hartley's mechanistic Necessitarianism,

and attempted to rigorously apply it to the moral, social and

biological spheres. 'Moral obligation', political 'power' and

'animal life', he argued, could best be explained in terms of a

mechanistic framework of externally operating causes, beginning

ultimately with God. All of these phenomena, he noted, had been

'believed to depend upon causes within themselves; but they are

now rescued from an internal and placed upon an external basis.'


39 D'Elia, 'Revolutionary uses of psychology'. The quotes are takenfrom pp. 112 and 117, respectively.

40 Hutchison, 'Eclipse of Scholastic Philosophy', pp. 337-40.

There was thus an underlying similarity between these diverse

phenomena, which reflected the integral nature of Hartley's

system. Even Hartley's psychophysiology, Rush maintained,

supported the idea of a thoroughly egalitarian Christian

republic. But the crucial instrument for reform was the

association of ideas which, Rush insisted, must be applied at all

levels of education to ensure the formation of correct moral and

political attitudes. He thus urged his compatriots to undertake

'the moral education of youth upon new and mechanical

principles.'(39) Once the right social and educational

environment had been established, the Necessitarian learning

process described by Hartley would naturally unfold.

Rush's insistence on the external, rather than the internal,

causes of behaviour again reveals the link between Hartley's

psychology and the mechanical philosophy, and the political

implications of the latter. Hutchison has observed that the

mechanical philosophy's view of matter was heavily relational:

that is, it took a body's characteristics to be largely a

function of its relationships with other bodies external to it,

and not to qualities within it.(40) Like the mechanical

philosophy, Hartley's Necessitarian psychology similarly

emphasized the external, and not the internal, causes of

behaviour, and thus implied a rejection of the innate,

Aristotelian qualities used to justify a hierarchical social

order.


41 Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, pp. 94, 92.

42 Ibid., p. 94.

43 See, for example, Krieger, Kings and Philosophers, pp. 153-63,210-15.

I.5 Mechanistic Necessitarianism and the Politics of Reason

In his famous debate with the champion of Newtonianism,

Samuel Clarke, the German philosopher Leibniz complained about

Newton's failure to explain gravity in the intelligible language

of mechanistic interaction. Newton's non-mechanical gravitation,

he claimed, was 'inexplicable, unintelligible, precarious,

groundless, and unexampled.' It was not amenable to human

reason, in contrast to the natural philosophy of Boyle who

(Leibniz approvingly noted) had 'made it his chief business to

inculcate, that every thing was done mechanically in natural

philosophy.'(41)

This importance given by Leibniz to reason in scientific

matters was a legacy of the seventeenth-century mechanical

philosophers' onslaught on the restrictive authority of

Aristotelian Scholasticism. No longer were knowledge claims

which were made solely on the basis of a traditional authority

seen as acceptable. Now, any such claim was supposed to undergo

the scrutiny of the individual's own judgement, and reasons had

to be provided for believing it. Mechanistic explanations, as

Leibniz pointed out to Clarke, were intelligible to human reason,

while Newton's account of the operation of gravity seemed

suspiciously like a return to the unintelligible universe of the

Scholastics.(42) An important concomitant of the new emphasis on

reason here, however, was a profound questioning of other forms

of traditional authority; for example, that of political and

ecclesiastical institutions.(43) The insistence of mechanistic

science that the world was rational and intelligible, therefore,

had revolutionary implications.


44 Priestley, Philosophical Necessity Illustrated, p. 7.

Such an anti-authoritarian tendency was overt in the

psychological Necessitarianism of Hartley and Priestley which

took the mechanical philosophy as its model. This becomes clear

once we examine the attitudes of both thinkers to the crucial

notion of free will, a notion which had traditionally been

interpreted (as the word 'free' indicates) in non-deterministic

terms. Both in fact claimed that free will was congruous with

their mechanistic determinism. This, however, is a manifest

contradiction. For the strict determinism that Hartley and

Priestley were arguing for, by definition, excludes free will

understood as being unconditioned choice. Nevertheless, both

seem to have been genuinely convinced that Necessitarianism was

compatible with free will. So let us examine their claim. Their

argument goes like this: human beings possess the capacity to

choose from a number of possible alternative outcomes. The

choice they make, however, is always determined by a prior

motive(s) which can have only one possible outcome. Faced with a

number of alternative outcomes, then, a person will only choose

the one which is in fact dictated by his or her motive(s) at that

time. This position was put succinctly by Priestley in The

Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity Illustrated.(44)

All the liberty, or rather power, that I say a man has not,is that of doing several things when all the previouscircumstances (including the state of his mind and his viewsof things) are precisely the same. What I contend for isthat, with the same state of mind, the same strength of anyparticular passion, for example, and the same views ofthings, as any particular object appearing equallydesirable, he would always, voluntarily, make the samechoice, and come to the same determination.

For Priestley, therefore, people are free to choose, but any

choice is always determined by a prior mental state. The sort of

free will that Hartley and Priestley were talking about, then,

consists simply in the freedom to realize one's volitions. So


45 Hartley, Observations, vol. 1, pp. 500-1.

Hartley has a case in claiming that free will, as he and

Priestley understood it, 'is not only consistent with the

Doctrine of Mechanism, but even flows from it'. For he saw the

human will as just another caused effect in the seemingly

deterministic, mechanical sequences of phenomena. This

interpretation of free will, however, sidestepped the real issue

of whether the human will could operate independently of such

causal constraints.

Both thinkers, however, had a ready answer to this problem.

There was another kind of free will, they claimed, that was

incompatible with mechanistic Necessitarianism and against which

they forcefully protested. This 'philosophical free-will', as

Hartley called it, was the very antithesis of the deterministic

principle that a course of action and its opposite cannot both

result from the same initial conditions.(45) It in fact

corresponds to the technical conception of free will as

undetermined choice. In behavioural terms, to possess this sort

of free will would mean being able to act in opposition to one's

motives. For Hartley and Priestley, such an idea was

nonsensical, as all actions were necessarily governed by motives

and so could not be viewed as occurring independently of them.

They thus adamantly rejected it.

So, why did they reject it and argue for a deterministic view

of human behaviour? There may have been religious grounds for

doing so, as the question of the will's autonomy was particularly

relevant to Christian theology. For to repudiate free will, as

Hartley and Priestley were clearly doing, could lead to blaming

God (rather than human beings) for moral evil, or end up casting

doubt upon the very existence of God. For, if the world were

viewed as capable of functioning in a purely deterministic

fashion, the ongoing influence of a supreme being was apparently


46 See, for example, Halévy, Philosophic Radicalism, pp. 8-9, 20-1,486-7..


48 CC,1, p. 49.

superfluous. Yet, both Hartley and Priestley were extremely

devout Christians, and clearly did not pursue their

Necessitarianism to promote atheism. Their objections to an

autonomous free will and their affirmation of necessity, then,

must have had some other purpose. This purpose may have been a

strictly philosophical one of endeavouring to determine the truth

of the question. This, however, does not seem plausible, as very

little space is devoted by either Hartley or Priestley to

refuting the opposition. They appeared to be interested only in

demonstrating to their readers the coherence of their own

position.

A whole host of other religious and philosophical concerns

must surely have been behind their promotion of Necessitarianism,

but my concern here is to point out a political motivation - one

that is consistent throughout this thesis. Thus, Utilitarian

advocates of Necessitarianism saw this philosophy as having

important political uses, and they make this remarkably

explicit.(46) From a Necessitarian perspective, the precise

causes of any action or thought were revealed to be amenable to

human enquiry and discoverable by retracing the mechanical

sequence of causes that led to the thought or action. Hartley

had written that 'all the Evidences for the mechanical Nature of

the Body or Mind are so many Encouragements to study them

faithfully and diligently, since what is mechanical may both be

understood and remedied.'(47) On the political level this

'doctrine of philosophical necessity' showed, as the young

Coleridge pointed out, 'that vice is the effect of error and the

offspring of surrounding circumstances'.(48) It was then just a


49 The Enlightenment was clearly a movement against superstitition andits buttressing of traditional power. Kant's short 1784 essay, 'Whatis Enlightenment' summed up the demystifying tendency of theeighteenth century. The Enlightenment's motto, Kant claimed, was'Have courage to use your own reason!', and he insisted this wasparticularly applicable to religion. See Kant, Foundations,pp. 83-90.

question of changing social circumstances in order to obtain a

more equitable distribution of happiness.

But it was not just such indirect applications of

Necessitarianism that might lead one to conclude that denials of

'philosophical free-will' had a definite political purpose. For

to affirm that causation must be fully explicable was a blunt

affirmation of what was perhaps the central question of the

Enlightenment - that there are no mysteries - and this presented

a challenge to the authority of tradition.(49) Even though

Hartley and Priestley did not explicitly oppose 'philosophical

free-will' on such grounds, simply by virtue of arguing against

it they were bringing into question any form of traditional

authority - philosophical, ecclesiastical or political - which

ignored the universality of reason.

There was, in fact, an obvious way in which this

Necessitarian insistence on intelligibility and rationality

undermined traditional authority. We have already noted that

Hartley's central purpose in the first part of Observations was

to show how a moral sense could be obtained from sense

experience. Thus, as Hartley himself acknowledged, he was

pursuing the epistemological task engaged in by Locke of

demonstrating that practically all human knowledge was

empirically derived. Like Locke, then, he was simultaneously

intent on showing that there were no innate principles or ideas.

But Locke's attack on innatism had had a clearly political as

well as a philosophical agenda. For Locke was following the

proponents of the new mechanistic science in disputing

traditional authority and insisting that all knowledge be


50 Locke, Essay, 1.4.25, (p. 87).

51 Hartley, Observations, vol. 1, p. v.

subjected to the tests of reason or empirical evidence.

Innatism, he argued, could not be supported on either ground, and

so was open to abuse by those who spoke from a position of

authority. Such abuse, he implied, had in fact already occurred,

for many realized the power to be gained from denying others the

use of their natural faculties. 'It was of no small advantage',

he maintained,(50)

to those who affected to be masters and teachers, to makethis the principle of principles, - that principles must notbe questioned. For, having once established this tenet,that there are innate principles, it put their followersupon a necessity of receiving some doctrines as such; whichwas to take them off from the use of their own reason andjudgment, and put them upon believing and taking them upontrust without further examination; in which posture of blindcredulity they might be more easily governed by, and madeuseful to some sort of men, who had the skill and office toprinciple and guide them. Nor is it a small power it givesone man over another, to have the authority to be thedictator of principles, and teacher of unquestionabletruths, and to make a man swallow that for an innateprinciple which may serve to his purpose who teacheth them.

Significantly, one of the major inspirations for Hartley's

Observations had been a short essay by his contemporary, the

scholar John Gay (1699-1745), who had taken up the Lockean banner

against the innatist philosophy of Frances Hutcheson. Hartley

declared that it was Gay's Dissertation Concerning the

Fundamental Principle and Immediate Criterion of Virtue

(published as a preface to William King's 1731 Essay on the

Origin of Evil) that had first suggested to him the possibility

of using psychological association to explain the formation of

all intellectual ideas.(51) Gay's specific disagreement with

Hutcheson was over the latter's notion of an innate moral faculty

or 'moral sense'. The empiricist Gay vigorously repudiated the

view 'that this Moral Sense, or these public Affections, are

innate, or implanted in us'. On the contrary, he asserted, such


52 Gay, Dissertation, pp. xi-xxxiii.

sociable 'instincts' were merely the product of habit, and could

be shown upon further examination to be due either to the

imitation of others with an end to obtaining their approbation,

or to the association in our minds of actions considered virtuous

with past pleasure or happiness.(52) Hartley, like Gay, rejected

the notion of an innate moral sense, maintaining that association

provided a completely adequate and comprehensible account of

human virtue. Reason once again was claimed to be the only

reliable arbiter in such debates; a non-rational foundation for

moral principles was clearly distasteful to eighteenth-century

Lockeans such as Gay and Hartley. However, the seriousness with

which Hartley took up the gauntlet indicates that, for him, as

well as for Locke and Gay, there was a great deal more at stake

in the controversy surrounding innate ideas than simply the

philosophical adequacy of the concept. Once more, it is

plausible to presume that the issue was really a wider one

involving (at least) unsubstantiated authority. This

interpretation is confirmed by an explicitly political treatment

of the question later in the century by Priestley.

In 1774 Priestley published a critique of the Scottish

'common sense' school of philosophy in which he saw a restatement

of the innatist notions that Locke and Hartley had attempted to

discredit. As a disciple of both the latter, Priestley,

understandably, was opposed to what he took to be a dangerous

return to an irrational, obscurantist philosophy. A quotation on

the title-page of Priestley's critique, taken from Gay's

Dissertation, gave a plain indication of where his sympathies

lay: 'As some men have imagined innate ideas, because they had

forgot how they came by them; so others have set up almost as

many distinct instincts as there are acquired principles of


53 Priestley, Examination, title-page.

54 Ibid., pp. 1-7. Priestley's criticisms of 'common sense' philosophyare not entirely justified, although there does appear to have beensome truth in accusations such as the one here. See Grave, CommonSense, pp. 79n., 144. Grave points out that there were significantdifferences in the positions of the three figures targetted byPriestley: Thomas Reid (1710-1796), James Beattie (1735-1803), andJames Oswald (1703-1793). Reid, the founder of this school ofphilosophy - which was designed to combat Hume's scepticism - was amore rigorous thinker than either Beattie or Oswald who popularized(and occasionally misrepresented) Reid's views. Priestley's attackon 'common sense', according to Grave, may well have been aimed atthe more excessive claims of Reid's disciples. Ibid., pp. 1-5.

55 Priestley, Examination, pp. 200-1. There were apparently grounds forPriestley's complaint here that there was a tendency to subjectivism

(continued...)

acting.'(53) As suggested by this quotation, one of Priestley's

objections in the book was philosophical. The 'common sense'

doctrine, he complained, unnecessarily multiplied entities by

explaining mental phenomena in terms of 'a number of independent,

arbitrary, instinctive principles', instead of using the

economical, empiricist sensationalism of Locke or Hartley.(54)

This complaint, revealingly, was very much like that made by

mechanical philosophers about the medieval Aristotelians'

idiosyncratic qualities (see above, pp. 29, 30). But there were

also other urgent grounds for exposing the deficiencies of

'common sense' philosophy. Its disregard for 'the powers of

reason', Priestley declared, left it open to a wide range of

abuses. One could easily imagine, he wrote, such views

'extending their authority farther than the precincts of

metaphysics, morals, religion, christianity, and protestantism'.

The implication here was that the civil sphere too was affected

by the irrational philosophy of 'common sense'. Indeed, the

political ramifications of this philosophy, Priestley went on,

were especially disturbing, for, with reason thus banished from

philosophy, 'politicians also ... may venture once more to

thunder out upon us their exploded doctrines of passive obedience

and non-resistance.' The 'common sense' teaching of Oswald in

particular, he noted, paved the way for despotic action:(55)


55(...continued)in the philosophy of 'common sense'. See Grave, Common Sense,pp. 124-6.

56 Paley, Principles, p. 16.

for every man will think himself authorized to assume theoffice of interpreting its decrees, as this new powerholds a separate office in every man's own breast.Indeed our author has left the politician but little todo ..., having ranked obedience to the magistrate amongthe primary truths of nature.

For Priestley, an innatist philosophy clearly had the potential

to be abused by those in power. Whereas the philosophies of

Locke and Hartley - which demanded explanations for mental

phenomena - offered a safeguard from such abuse.

Priestley's sentiments about the political dangers of

innatism were echoed by his contemporary, the prominent Anglican

archdeacon, William Paley (1743-1805) who similarly indicated

that the notion of innate moral principles was susceptible to

political exploitation. In a section of his Principles of Moral

and Political Philosophy (1785), Paley argued against Aristotle's

idea that some people are born slaves, in order to expose

theories which advanced the notion of instinctive or inborn moral

qualities. Such theories, Paley suggested, were often used to

justify the claims of those who defended tradition and opposed

social and political change. He explained that(56)

authority and convenience, education, prejudice, andgeneral practice, have a great share in the making of[ideas like that of Aristotle's]. For which reason, I amapt to suspect, that a system of morality, built uponinstincts, will only find out reasons and excuses foropinions and practices already established - will seldomcorrect or reform them.

It is easy to see how Necessitarianism supported the

arguments of those who claimed that innatism lent itself to

political manipulation. For Necessitarianism provided a way of

combatting claims that had no rational basis, especially those



58 Goodwin, Friends of Liberty, pp. 81-98.

about human psychology. In Priestley's philosophy, the

Necessitarian assault on the abuses of traditional authority was

sustained by his monistic ontology. For, according to this

ontology, mind was subject to the same mechanical causal laws as

matter, and these laws were seen to be accessible to human

reason. In his Disquisitions Relating to Matter and Spirit,

Priestley maintained that 'the doctrine of necessity ... is the

immediate result of the doctrine of the materiality of man; for

mechanism is the undoubted consequence of materialism.'(57) Like

his mechanistic Necessitarianism, then, Priestley's monism upheld

a political position that challenged those who were unable to

vindicate their views by reason.

I.6 Unitarian Hostility to Church and State

Priestley's challenge to tradition as a source of knowledge,

implicit in his critique of the Scottish philosophers, was of

course partly self-interested. For his professed Unitarianism

excluded him from the religious and political Establishments

which he so strongly condemned. Much of his writing, therefore,

advocated equal religious and political rights for those who

dissented from tradition in the form of Anglican orthodoxy. In

the years leading up to and immediately after the French

Revolution, the Unitarians had intensified their attempts to have

the Test and Corporation Acts repealed, believing that the time

was opportune to force a change.(58) The Unitarian neophyte,

Samuel Coleridge, inspired by the examples of Frend and

Priestley, joined in their protest against the reactionary forces

of Church and State.


59 CC,1, p. 11. The perception that the Dissenters' participation inreform was chiefly self-interested was shared also by the Manchesterreformer, Thomas Walker, who wrote in 1794 that 'Dissenters ...through fear or some other motive ... have been so strongly theadvocates of an Overstrained Moderation that they have rather beenthe enemies than the friends of those who have ventured the most andeffected the most for the rights of the people.' Cited in Thompson,English Working Class, p. 57.

60 Priestley, Lectures, vol. 2, pp. 56-9. Priestley's preference ineconomics was for a liberal, laissez-faire policy. See ibid.,pp. 230-2, 241.

Notwithstanding the youthful Coleridge's participation in the

Unitarian cause, it is important to recognize that there was a

crucial difference between his political position and that of

Unitarians like Priestley, a difference of which he was fully

aware. In one of his Bristol lectures, for example, he took to

task a 'class among the friends of Freedom' who (though not

mentioned by name) are identifiable as middle-class Dissenters,

ostracized by the Test and Corporation Acts. Here Coleridge

berated his partners in reform, not only for their selfish

ambitions but also for their indifference and condescension to

the poor. He complained that(59)

they pursue the interests of Freedom steadily, but withnarrow and self-centering views: they anticipate withexultation the abolition of priviledged orders, and ofacts that persecute by exclusion from the right ofcitizenship ... [yet] whatever tends to improve andelevate the ranks of our poorer brethren, they regardwith suspicious jealousy, as the dreams of the visionary;as if there were any thing in the superiority of Lord toGentleman, so mortifying in the barrier, so fatal tohappiness in the consequences, as the more realdistinction of master and servant, of rich man and ofpoor.

While severe, this portrayal of the Dissenters' politics seems to

have had some truth in it. Priestley, for instance, lectured in

the Dissenting academy at Warrington against government provision

of relief for the poor on the grounds that this encouraged

idleness and thriftlessness.(60) Coleridge's position on reform

was much more radical. For a Christian nation to countenance any


61 CC,1, p. 218.

62 Ibid., pp. 30, 285.

63 Ibid., pp. 195-202, 207-12. The source for Coleridge's restatementof Priestley's ideas is given by the editors of Coleridge's lecturesas Joseph Priestley, An History of Early Opinions Concerning JesusChrist. (4 vols. Birmingham, 1786. Vol. 1, pp. 320-55.) CC,1,p. 208n.2.

form of economic disparity, he believed, was hypocritical. For

'Universal Equality', he argued, 'is the object of the

Mess[iah's] mission'.(61)

Nonetheless, Coleridge's criticism of the Church

Establishment in the mid-1790s was expressed in terms of the

rationalism characteristic of Unitarian Christianity. Thus, one

of his foremost complaints was directed at what he saw as the

established Church's manipulation of the public through

mystification. For example, in a 1795 published lecture,

Conciones ad populum or Addresses to the People, he attacked the

Church for fostering political quiescence by cloaking its

teachings in mystery. In an almost contemporaneous pamphlet, The

Plot Discovered: or An Address to the People, against Ministerial

Treason, the same tendency was again censured, and Coleridge

warned lest 'our laws as well as our religion be muffled up in

mysteries'.(62) Orthodox Christianity was represented as the ally

of privilege and power, and Coleridge chastized it in his Bristol

lectures for deviating from what he considered to be the true

egalitarian purport of the gospels. In one of these lectures he

drew on arguments of Priestley to explain the degeneration of

Christian teachings. Corruption of the original Church's

beliefs, Coleridge claimed, was due principally to the influence

of ideas of Gnostic and Platonic origin: Gnosticism had

encouraged mystification, opportunism and exclusiveness in the

Church, while Plato's metaphysics had given rise to the confusing

notion of the Christian Trinity.(63) The young Unitarian's

opposition to the Trinity, however, was not merely doctrinal.


64 CL,1, p. 282: to John Thelwall, 17 December 1796. Coleridge's viewthat Christianity had a fundamentally political message is clear fromthe prospectus of his sixth Bristol lecture which announced that hewould be speaking on 'The grand political Views of Christianity -that far beyond all other Religions, and even sects of Philosophy, itis the Friend of Civil Freedom ... '. CC,1, p. 214.

65 'Religious Musings', ll. 334, 330, and n.1, PW,1, p. 121.

The problem with the Platonic metaphysics adopted by

Christianity, he argued, was not so much its falsity, but the way

in which it had been used to evade the simple message of the man

Christ - a message which was above all else political. Instead

of carrying out the revolutionary mission expressed in Christ's

teachings, the Church, Coleridge complained, had opted to defend

the old order of privilege and inequality. Christianity, he

wrote to the radical leader, John Thelwall,(64)

teaches in the most explicit terms the rights of Man, hisright to Wisdom, his right to an equal share in all theblessings of Nature; it commands it's disciples to goevery where, & every where to preach these rights ... .

Evidence of the young Coleridge's hostility to the British

Establishment of his day is not hard to find. His poem,

'Religious Musings', for instance, menacingly foretold the

downfall of those in power. The Anglican Church was portrayed

here as an obfuscatory institution 'on whose black front was

written Mystery', and as a 'mitred Atheism', more concerned with

pomp than piety. In a footnote, Coleridge deciphered his

prophetic allegory, informing his readers that the storm there

mentioned - signalling the dawn of freedom from oppression - was

the French Revolution, and that Babylon referred to 'the union of

Religion with Power and Wealth, wherever it is found.'(65)

Another major poetic effort from this period also adopted an

allegorical form to convey a similar revolutionary message -

Southey's poem, Joan of Arc, on which Coleridge collaborated, was

an obvious statement of the authors' disapproval of Britain's

aggression against the French republic: Joan, symbol of liberty,


66 See Southey, Joan of Arc.

67 See editor's introduction, CC,2, pp. xxxiii-xxxiv.

68 Ibid., pp. 5, 373.

69 While also using Coleridge's term 'patriot sage' in the sense usedhere, Wylie applies it more broadly to include the young reformerswho shared Coleridge's Pantisocratic vision of a Utopian existence inthe New World. Wylie, Young Coleridge, pp. 47-61, 77, 79-80.Although Wylie argues that these young visionaries were among the'elect' group referred to in 'Religious Musings', the idea of'patriot sage' seems to me applicable only to the narrower cluster ofscientific thinkers described below.

had been put to death unjustly by the same British oppressors

that were now repeating the moral crimes of their forebears.(66)

In 1796, the year Joan of Arc was published, Coleridge

presented a more direct challenge to the authorities in the form

of his own periodical, The Watchman, which he circulated mainly

to well-to-do Unitarian subscribers in the north Midlands.(67)

The periodical's aim, as its prospectus announced, was to support

the Whigs in their attempt to revoke the Pitt government's recent

legislation banning anti-royalist proclamations and political

assembly, as well as to promote the expansion of the suffrage.

It reprinted revolutionary speeches by George Washington and by

members of the radical French Committee of Public Safety.

Coleridge plainly shared the belief of the latter that 'nations,

too long the dupes of perfidious kings, nobles, and priests, will

eventually recover their rights'.(68)

I.7 The 'Patriot Sages'

In his pro-revolutionary poem, 'Religious Musings', Coleridge

announced the replacement of the old privileged order by a new

millenarian constitution heralded by the French Revolution. The

forerunners of this Christian Millenium were the natural

philosophers - 'patriot sages', as he called them(69) - whose

scientific discoveries had helped liberate society from the


70 "Religious Musings", ll. 224-5, 234-7, 359n.1, 364-375, PW,1,pp. 117, 118, 122-3.

71 The following summary is based on Rose, 'Priestley Riots'.

injustices of that ancien régime: 'From Avarice thus, from Luxury

and War/ Sprang heavenly Science; and from Science Freedom.'

Benjamin Franklin was the first of the 'patriot sages' mentioned

here, depicted as harnessing the power of the skies for human

benefit. Later, a triumphant pageant of those 'who in past ages

have endeavoured to ameliorate the state of man' is greeted to

Christ's thousand-year kingdom by the poet Milton, as 'Adoring

Newton his serener eye/ Raises to heaven'. Hartley then follows

and is praised for his Newtonian neuropsychology. Finally,

Priestley appears as 'patriot, and saint, and sage/ ... [who]

from his loved native land/ Statesmen blood-stained and priests

idolatrous/ By dark lies maddening the blind multitude/ Drove

with vain hate.'(70)

Coleridge's political allegiances are clear here. Franklin

had been one of the key figures in the struggle for American

independence from Britain, and Coleridge's praise of him in

'Religious Musings' underscores the young poet's revolutionary

sympathies. Priestley - champion of reform, devout Christian and

natural philosopher - had recently been driven from his country

by a morally and politically corrupt Establishment. The event

alluded to by Coleridge in the above lines was the burning of

Priestley's house and laboratory by a loyalist mob during anti-

revolutionary riots in Birmingham in 1791.(71) These riots took

place immediately after local supporters of reform had been

celebrating the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. The

rioters targetted the homes of prominent Dissenters known for

their reformist politics, and, according to some contemporary

accounts, were countenanced by members of the local clergy and

gentry. It is also clear, however, that the crowd was propelled

by its own deep-seated prejudices: the rioters' anachronistic


72 Another possible motive suggested for the Birmingham mob's antipathyto Priestley was the latter's vocal opposition to the Poor Laws.Priestley, like others of his social class and similar Calvinisticupbringing, complained that relief of the poor encouraged idlenessand ultimately led to social disorder. See Plumb, England in theEighteenth Century, pp. 134-5. Interestingly, Kramnick points outthat criticisms of the poor by middle-class radicals such asPriestley and Thomas Paine mirrored their complaints about thearistocracy: both classes were condemned for parasitism and theirfailure to conform to a Protestant bourgeois ideal of self-disciplineand diligence. Kramnick, Rage of Edmund Burke, pp. 159-60. See alsoDickinson, Liberty and Property, pp. 228-30.

73 Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 16, p. 364, s.v. 'Priestley'.Priestley accepted French citizenship, but refused membership of theConvention on the grounds that he knew little of the language and ofthe region he had been chosen to represent. Garrett, RespectableFolly, p. 135.

cries of 'No Popery' concealed a class-based resentment towards

their largely middle-class victims, many of whom, like Priestley,

were conspicuous for having embraced Nonconformist religion. For

different motives, the class and religious questions also drove

the antagonism of the local Anglican Establishment which saw in

middle-class Dissent a threat to its own privileged position.

Prior to the riots, Dissenters were represented in the sermons of

Anglican clergymen as undermining church and state, and such

rhetoric was clearly a goad to the Birmingham crowd.(72) The

Birmingham Establishment, then, bore a good deal of the

responsibility for the riots, and in fact did little to prevent

them. Indeed, they had good reason to dislike Priestley. For

the radical Dissenter had become increasingly outspoken in his

pro-revolutionary sentiments and was soon to be made a French

citizen and elected to membership of the newly formed French

National Convention.(73)

Coleridge's admiration for the politics of such 'patriot

sages' was indissociable, as 'Religious Musings' shows, from his

high regard for their scientific discoveries. This connection

between science and liberty - reason and revolution - had been

encountered by him while at Cambridge, but it was even more

noticeable in his radical Bristol milieu. An important new


74 On Coleridge's association with Beddoes, see Stansfield, ThomasBeddoes, pp. 123-44.

75 Quoted in Levere, 'Beddoes at Oxford', p. 65. See also idem, 'Dr.Thomas Beddoes'. On Beddoes at Oxford, see also Stansfield, ThomasBeddoes, pp. 31-59, 76-8.

76 See Schofield, Lunar Society. Significantly, this Society was one ofthe targets of the Birmingham mob that attacked Priestley's house in1791. Rose, 'Priestley Riots', pp. 75-6.

77 On Darwin's influence on Coleridge's poetry, see King-Hele, Doctor ofRevolution, pp. 260, 267-70. Coleridge had met Darwin whilecollecting subscribers for The Watchman, and, though he complained ofDarwin's deistic tendencies, was clearly impressed by this 'mostinventive of philosophical men.' See CL,1, p. 177: to Josiah Wade,27 January 1796. Coleridge's high esteem for Darwin can also begauged by a letter of the following year in which he claimed thatDarwin 'is the first literary character in Europe, and the most

(continued...)

influence on Coleridge here was the prominent chemist, Thomas

Beddoes (1750-1808), who was also Coleridge's physician.(74)

Beddoes had been forced to resign from a readership in chemistry

at Oxford in 1792, after his nomination for a proposed new Regius

Chair of Chemistry at the university had been refused because of

his politics. The Home Office described Beddoes as 'a most

violent Democrate ... [who] takes great pains to seduce Young Men

to the same political principles with himself'. Subsequently,

his name joined Priestley's on the government's black list of

'Disaffected & seditious persons'.(75) Beddoes was connected with

a number of other well-known scientific figures of the time, all

of whom shared the same reformist outlook. In particular, he was

associated, as was Franklin, with the Lunar Society of Birmingham

- an informal group of reform-minded scientists, inventors and

industrialists - which took its name from regular meetings at the

full moon. This Society included well-known figures of the

eighteenth-century Industrial Revolution, such as James Watt,

Matthew Boulton and Josiah Wedgwood. Priestley too was a member,

as was the famous physician, naturalist and poet, Erasmus Darwin

(1731-1802).(76) Darwin's work in fact had a significant impact

on the young Coleridge who adopted many of the scientist's ideas

and metaphors in his own poetry.(77) Coleridge also shared the


77(...continued)original-minded Man.' Ibid., p. 305: to John Thelwall, 6 February1797.

78 Cited in King-Hele, Doctor of Revolution, p. 205.

79 Darwin, Botanic Garden, Pt. 1, Canto 2, ll. 361-2, 365-8, 377-8,383-6, pp. 91-2.

overtly republican politics of Darwin, who, in a letter of 1790,

enthusiastically declared to his fellow Lunatic, Watt, 'Do you

not congratulate your grandchildren on the dawn of universal

liberty? I feel myself becoming all french in both chemistry and

politics.'(78) Darwin's didactic poetry exemplified the alliance

between science and politics that we find in Coleridge's thinking

at this time. In his 1791 Botanic Garden, for instance, Darwin

wrote enthusiastically of the revolutions in America and France,

and here too the scientist and statesman, Franklin, was

represented as playing a significant role in political

transformation. Darwin depicted Franklin's electrical fluid as

the metaphorical vehicle for propagating the message of

emancipation from tyranny and ignorance:(79)

So, borne on founding pinions to the WEST, When Tyrant-Power had built his eagle nest ...

Immortal FRANKLIN watch'd the callow crew,And stabb'd the struggling Vampires, ere they flew.- The patriot-flame with quick contagion ran,Hill lighted hill, and man electrified man ...

Long had the Giant-form on GALLIA's plainsInglorious slept, unconscious of his chains ...

While stern Bastile with iron cage inthrallsHis folded limbs, and hems in marble walls.- Touch'd by the patriot-flame, he rent amazedThe flimsy bonds, and round and round him gazed ... .

So, for Coleridge and the scientific thinkers he referred to as

'patriot sages', social reform was inextricably linked to

scientific progress.

The political vision sustained by the scientific achievements

celebrated in 'Religious Musings', however, was expressed from a


80 Garrett, Respectable Folly, pp. 1-11. 121-5.

81 Hartley, Observations, vol. 2, pp. 440-1, 455.

82 Priestley, Works, vol. 1, pt.2, p. 146, cited in Garrett, RespectableFolly, p. 130. Priestley, in his Institutes of Natural and RevealedReligion (1772-1774), initially advanced a symbolic rather than aliteral understanding of the millenium. See Priestley, Works,vol. 2, pp. 366-7. However, he changed his mind later, and in AGeneral History of the Christian Church, to the Fall of the Western

(continued...)

religious perspective that sits strangely with the young

Coleridge's Unitarian insistence on rationality in religious

matters. This was a Christian millenarianism that had often

appeared in Europe in periods of social and political upheaval.

In Britain, the belief in the advent of the thousand-year reign

of Christ on Earth had flourished during the Puritan Revolution

of the 1640s.(80) In the eighteenth century, the rapid pace of

social and intellectual change seemed to contribute to

millenarian speculation that the end times were approaching.

Hartley, for example, believed that there were clear indications

that 'all the States of Christendom' would soon meet the fate

prophesied of 'Babylon' in the book of Revelation. He urged that

'no one deceive himself or others. The present Circumstances of

the World are extraordinary and critical, beyond what has ever

yet happened.'(81) Two decades later, Priestley expressed similar

views, but his apocalyptic warnings took on an urgency that

Hartley's had not had. For, in the 1770s, the arrival of a new

era seemed decidedly imminent, as political events began to take

on a definite revolutionary colouring. In a letter of 1771, for

instance, in which he discussed the political situation in North

America, Priestley confided, 'to me every thing looks like the

approach of that dismal catastrophe described, I may say

predicted, by Dr. Hartley'. There was, however, a note of

optimistic anticipation in Priestley's forebodings, for he added,

'I shall be looking for the downfall of Church and State

together. I am really expecting some very calamitous, but

finally glorious, events.'(82)


82(...continued)Empire (1790: 1803), he argued 'that the reign of Christ, whatever beits nature, will be on this earth, seems to be evident, from what wassaid by the angels at the time of the ascension, viz. that he wouldreturn from heaven in the same manner as they then saw him go upthither.' Ibid., vol. 8, p. 204.

83 See: Garrett, Respectable Folly, passim; Thompson, English WorkingClass, pp. 54-5, 127-30.

84 Priestley, Present State of Europe, p. 2.

85 CN,1, entry 133: 1796.

For Priestley and others who shared his views, 1789 could not

but have seemed to be the fulfillment of their millenarian hopes.

Indeed, the Revolution saw a dramatic resurgence in millenarian

proclamations in Britain as well as in France. Many saw current

events as confirmation of Biblical prophecies predicting the end

of the world, Christ's Second Coming and the emergence of a new

'Golden Age'.(83) In 1794, for example, Priestley gravely

pronounced that it was 'highly probable ... that the present

disturbances in Europe are the beginning of those very calamitous

times' prophesied in the Bible.(84) 'Religious Musings' reveals

that Coleridge too believed that the Millenium was imminent, but

that he felt that its accomplishment rested with 'patriot sages'

- those natural philosophers whose discoveries had furthered

social progress.

The crucial role that Coleridge saw natural philosophy as

playing in the Millenium's realization is apparent elsewhere in

this period. For example, in 1796, he recorded:(85)

Millenium, an History of, as brought about by progressionin natural philosophy - particularly, meteorology orscience of airs & winds - Quaere - might not a Commentaryon the Revelations be written from late philosophicaldiscoveries?

Kathleen Coburn has pointed out the similarity between this

passage and a footnote in the first part of Darwin's The Botanic

Garden. In the section of his poem where the footnote appears,

Darwin speculated that atmospheric changes in wind direction


86 Ibid., entry 133n.; Darwin, Botanic Garden, Pt. 1, Canto 4, ll.308n.1, 320, pp. 186-7. Wylie provides an illuminating account ofthe way in which the phenomena of air and gases were a major focus ofscientific interest for the three radical scientific figures mostinfluential on Coleridge's early attitude to natural philosophy -Priestley, Beddoes and Darwin. All three believed that immensebenefits to humanity would derive from a greater knowledge ofpneumatic phenomena. For Coleridge, the observations of thesescientific thinkers also offered rich possibilities for revolutionarysymbolism, of which he made ample use in his early poetry andlectures. See Wylie, Young Coleridge, pp. 68-74.

87 Cf. Wylie, Young Coleridge, p. 65. This incongruity was typical ofmillenarianism. See Garrett, Respectable Folly, pp. 7, 10.

88 On this optimism, see Hampson, The Enlightenment, pp. 99-106.

89 Priestley and Price, Free Discussion, p. 220. Priestley actuallycited Pope here.

might be due to chemical action, an understanding of which could

give human beings entry to a millenarian 'Golden Age'.(86) For

the free-thinking Darwin, the chiliastic language here was

clearly metaphorical: the 'Golden Age' was symbolic of the social

and political revolutions that a new knowledge of the physical

world, procured by natural philosophy, would bring about.

Coleridge, however, like his mentors, Hartley and Priestley,

seems to have taken the millenarian message literally, even

though he seemed also to share Darwin's secular perspective that

social transformation depended upon human effort.

Coleridge's millenarian attitudes, in fact, were somewhat

paradoxical. If the Millenium was predestined to occur, surely

human intervention was inefficacious.(87) This seeming

contradiction in Coleridge's position was underscored by his

simultaneous espousal in the mid-1790s of the characteristic

theological optimism of the eighteenth century.(88) Human

misfortune, he believed, was part of the divine plan; it was

simply, in the words of Alexander Pope, 'harmony not understood'.

Such a sanguine outlook had been embraced by Priestley who felt

that Pope's optimism was entailed by 'the doctrine of necessity'

which(89)


90 CL,1, pp. 145, 205: to Robert Southey, 29 December 1794; to JohnThelwall, late April 1796.

91 CC,1, p. 105.

leads us to consider ourselves, and every thing else asat the uncontrolled disposal of the greatest and best ofbeings; that, strictly speaking, nothing does, or can, gowrong; that all retrograde motions, in the moral as wellas in the natural world, are only apparent, not real.

Similarly convinced that social harmony would prevail

according to God's plan for humanity, Coleridge in 1794 urged

Southey to become 'a Necessitarian - and (believing in an all-

loving Omnipotence) an Optimist.' Later, in a letter to

Thelwall, he explained that the latter's atheism did not upset

him, for as 'a Necessitarian ... and as an Optimist, I feel

diminished concern.'(90) This acquiescence in the wisdom and

benevolence of divine providence pervaded Coleridge's 1795

Bristol lectures, where, for instance, he maintained that(91)

reasoning strictly and with logical Accuracy I shoulddeny the existence of any Evil, inasmuch as the enddetermines the nature of the means and I have been ableto discover nothing of which the end is not good.

Such apparent fatalism, however, was deceptive. In the section

immediately following this passage, Coleridge's standpoint was

rather that of the Hartleyan reformer. Suffering, he said, had

the purpose of inciting us to eliminate its cause; it provided an

indication that circumstances were not as God had intended them

to be and so should be altered. This of course presupposed a

knowledge of the divinely established principles according to

which the world operated, and, for Coleridge, those who possessed

that knowledge were the 'patriot sages'.


92 'The Destiny of Nations', ll. 18-20, PW,1, p. 132. In the first ofhis 1795 lectures, Coleridge similarly stated, 'The Omnipotent hasunfolded to us the Volume of the World, that there we may read theTranscript of himself.' CC,1, p. 94.

93 See, for example, Gombrich, Symbolic Images, pp. 124, 142-70. This,then, was not the kind of metaphorical symbol used (for example) byDante, to express in terms of common sense experience what theintellect has no means of adequately expressing: for instance, thesun as a symbol for God. See Boyde, Dante, p. 205 et. seq. ButDante also clearly saw the natural world as symbolic in aspecifically Neoplatonic way, which may be reflected here inColeridge's use of the idea of a symbol. For Dante saw the variouslevels of matter in the 'scale of being' as corresponding to aspiritual 'scale' extending beyond matter. Thus, one could come toknow the spiritual world via the material one. Ibid., pp. 129-31.

I.8 'Transfer[ring] the Proofs'

Coleridge's millenarian optimism, then, required another kind

of involvement by natural philosophers in God's plan. In order

to usher in the Millenium, one had to know how to interpret the

'book of nature' that God had written. In his 1796 millenarian

poem, 'The Destiny of Nations', Coleridge claimed that 'all that

meets the bodily sense' is 'Symbolical, one mighty alphabet/ For

infant minds'.(92) What precisely Coleridge meant by 'symbolical'

here is not made clear by him. But, presumably, he was using the

term in a Platonic or Neoplatonic, rather than an Aristotelian,

sense. In the Aristotelian tradition, a symbol tended to be

viewed as a conventional representation of something with which

it did not necessarily have any intrinsic connection - it was

merely a 'sign' for something else. Allegories or

personifications, such as 'Justice' represented by a woman

holding a balance in one hand and a sword in the other, are what

is meant by this kind of Aristotelian 'symbol'. For Platonists

and Neoplatonists, on the other hand, a symbol was not something

which merely stood for something else: it actually shared the

essential characteristics of that which it represented. For

instance, light was a symbol of the divine.(93)


94 CC,6, p. 30.

Such a Platonic use of the term 'symbol' was made explicit by

Coleridge some twenty years later, in a famous passage in The

Statesman's Manual (1816). A 'symbol', he there explained(94)

... is characterized by a translucence of the Special inthe Individual or of the General in the Especial or ofthe Universal in the General. Above all by thetranslucence of the Eternal through and in the Temporal.It always partakes of the Reality which it rendersintelligible; and while it enunciates the whole, abidesitself as a living part in that Unity, of which it is therepresentative.

Difficult as this passage may be, what it does convey is the

Platonic and Neoplatonic sense of there being different levels of

reality which have something essentially in common between them.

What Coleridge says here in fact comes very close to the

Renaissance Neoplatonic idea of a correspondence between the

microcosm and macrocosm: the spiritual realm is mirrored in both

nature and the human realm. This seems to cast some light on the

young Coleridge's use of the term 'symbolical' in 'The Destiny of

Nations'. For we shall see that he claimed that the structure of

nature was fundamentally similar to that of human societies. It

was thus imperative to understand the 'symbolical' language of

nature for what it could tell us about the world's moral

constitution.

Coleridge's view at this time that natural philosophy had the

special task of discovering 'moral' truths from an investigation

of the physical world is also indicated in a brief note which

seems to have been inspired by his reading of Thomas Burnet's

Sacred Theory of the Earth (1684-1690). This note, which simply

read 'transfer the proofs of natural to moral Sciences',

reflected Burnet's view that divine providence manifested itself


95 CN,1, entry 100: 1796, and editor's note. See Burnet, Theory of theEarth, vol. 1, pp. 107, 319, 323-4. The idea that knowledge ofnature could be used to support truths of religion and morality is ofcourse found in Joseph Butler's Analogy of Religion (1736). SeeButler, Works, vol. 1. In a letter of 1798, Coleridge praisedButler's arguments from nature, claiming that 'Butler's Analogy ...would answer irresistably all the objections to Christianity foundedon a priori reasonings'. CL,1, p. 386: to John Prior Estlin,13 February 1798. In 1801 Coleridge maintained that Butler was oneof the 'only three great Metaphysicians which this country hasproduced'. CL,2, p. 703: to Josiah Wedgwood, February 1801. Later,however, in marginal notes written possibly between 1808 and 1815,Coleridge found fault with some of Butler's analogical reasoning, andcriticized him for conflating the mental faculties of Reason andUnderstanding. CC,12, vol. 1, pp. 867-9: marginalia on Butler'sAnalogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution andCourse of Nature.

96 Burnet's apocalyptic warnings were designed to bolster the cause ofthe Anglican Church in the face of the threat posed by both theCatholic monarchy in Britain and the increasingly truculent anti-Protestantism of Louis XIV's France. That the millenarianism inBurnet's work was directed towards the political scene prior to theGlorious Revolution is supported, Margaret Jacob argues, by theomission of many of the crucial, millenarian passages in the 1690English translation of the original, Latin, pre-Revolutionaryedition. Jacob, The Newtonians, pp. 100-15. Although millenarianismin early modern Europe was typically a medium of expression forradical grievances, Jacob shows that it could just as easily beappropriated for the ideological purposes of moderates orconservatives who were anxious that its rhetorical power not beexploited by radicals alone. The millenarianianism of Burnet andother Anglicans during the Restoration is a case in point. Tellingconfirmation of this idea is also provided by Garrett who points outthat in the early 1790s millenarian sentiments suddenly becameconspicuous in official anti-Jacobin propaganda. Due to Britain'snew-found solidarity with anti-French Catholic countries and aninflux of clerical fugitives from across the channel, however, the'Beast' of the Apocalypse was now painted as republican France andnot Roman Catholicism. See Garrett, Respectable Folly, pp. 167-8.

in the human, as well as in the natural, spheres.(95) Burnet's

work no doubt made an impression on Coleridge, for it was

presented from a millenarian frame of reference and contained a

distinctly revolutionary message dictated by the political

circumstances in which Burnet was living.(96) Interestingly,

Burnet insisted that knowledge of the workings of Providence

would be obtained by a natural philosophy based on 'the true

principles that govern Nature, which are Geometrical and

Mechanical. By these you discover the footsteps of the Divine


97 Burnet, Theory of the Earth, vol. 1, p. 315. Burnet went on here tocriticize Aristotelian 'Forms and Qualities'. He complained that 'noman can raise a Theory upon such grounds, nor calculate anyrevolutions of Nature; nor render any service, or invent anythinguseful in Humane Life ...'. Ibid., pp. 315-16.

98 Wylie, Young Coleridge, pp. 72-4, 77.

Art and Wisdom, and trace the progress of Nature step by

step ...'.(97)

Coleridge's belief that only those capable of adequately

interpreting the 'book of nature' could 'transfer the proofs of

natural to moral Sciences' has been discussed by Wylie. Wylie

points out that Coleridge, like Priestley, saw general tendencies

in nature as providing the model for the way societies should

function. For example, good would overcome evil in the same way

that nature reconstituted its own equilibrium. The 'book of

nature' thus furnished clues to God's plan for humanity.(98)

For Coleridge, however, it was not just knowledge of general

tendencies in nature that could guide human action. It was the

fundamental rationality of nature itself that provided a

blueprint for the workings of the 'moral' sphere. The many

references to 'proofs' and 'evidence' in his writings at this

time suggest that what the young Necessitarian viewed as most

able to shed light on the 'moral sciences' was the rational and

empirical approach of the natural sciences.

For instance, in one of his Bristol lectures, Coleridge

invoked the Newtonian method in defence of revealed religion.

The claims of Christian revelation were credible, he argued,

because they were not just revelations, but were supported by 'a

mass of direct Evidence', just as Newton's scientific approach

involved the accumulation of observational data prior to

formulating a general theory. In this attitude to revelation,

Coleridge was following Locke who had argued that the claim to

have knowledge directly from God should always be put to the test


99 See Locke, Essay, 4.18 and 4.19, (pp. 424-33).

100 CC,1, p. 189.

101 Ibid., p. 175. The editors point out that Coleridge is closelyfollowing a passage in the first volume of Johann David Michaelis'sIntroduction to the New Testament. (Translated by Herbert Marsh.4 vols. Cambridge, 1793-1801.) Coleridge's knowledge of Newton inthis period seems to have been mainly second-hand, and derived partlyfrom Colin Maclaurin's Account of Sir Isaac Newton's PhilosophicalDiscoveries (1748), used in the first of Coleridge's Bristollectures. The editors' notes in CC,1, pp. 93-4, 97-8, 111, 190,detail Coleridge's borrowings from this work.

of reason.(99) Coleridge contrasted this method, which he saw

Newton's philosophy as exemplifying, with the strategy of

unbelievers whose attacks on Christianity (he claimed) displayed

an approach analogous to that used in the cosmological

constructions of Ptolemy and Descartes. Unable to provide

grounds for their rejection of Christianity, heathens could only

dismiss 'positive Testimony by ... metaphysical a priori

reasonings how God ought to have acted!'(100) Earlier in the same

lecture, Newton's method was invoked for similar reasons. Here,

Coleridge asserted that if an hypothesis conforms to the

available evidence better and more economically than any

alternative, then(101)

the probability amounts to a moral Certainty. On thisprinciple rests the Truth of the Newtonian System, andthe same principle obtains in Arithmetic. ... Let usadopt this undeniable Principle in our reasonings onRevealed Religion.

Such religious uses of the scientific method employed by

Newton and Locke had clear implications for the 'moral' realm.

For, by insisting that revelation be confirmed by reason or

experience, Coleridge, like Locke, was in effect challenging the

reliance of established religion upon tradition. The message

contained in Coleridge's advocacy of reason in religious matters

was that the clergy's authority, ostensibly founded on revelation

alone (but in reality based on tradition) should not be taken for

granted.


102 'A letter to Dr. Horseley', in Priestley and Price, Free Discussion,pp. 221-2. Significantly, at his trial, William Frend recommendedthe science of Priestley's precursors, Newton and Boscovich, asmodels of 'liberal enquiry'. See Piper, 'Unitarian Consensus',p. 276.

The rational method of the natural sciences also had the

broader political agenda discussed above in relation to

Necessitarianism. We saw that the Necessitarian reform of

Hartley and Priestley was based on the rationally amenable

principles of mechanistic philosophy. Nature was accessible to

human reason, for its operations could be understood in

intelligible, mechanical terms, and, for both thinkers, the

mechanistic approach to investigating the physical world was that

which ought to be applied to the human sphere. Priestley had

argued that there was in fact no point in making a distinction

between general principles governing the behaviour of matter and

those governing human psychology and, ultimately, morality. As

mental and physical phenomena obeyed the same causal rationality,

he maintained, there was 'no sufficient reason why we should not

comprize them under the same general term of physics.'(102) This

subjection of the human sphere to the mechanistic principles of

natural philosophy was definitely a major facet of Coleridge's

revolutionary, millenarian intention to 'transfer the proofs of

natural to moral Sciences'. But there was also another

politically suggestive sense in which this intention could be

interpreted.

Priestley had claimed that his physics was applicable to mind

as well as matter, and Coleridge, as we have seen, followed him

in this idea as well as in his own political and religious views.

Yet, despite Priestley's Unitarian belief in a transcendent God,

his monistic perspective further undermined this God's already

reduced role in a mechanistic universe. The seventeenth-century

mechanical philosophers' distinction between passive matter and

active spirit had propped up the belief in the necessity of


103 This is the central claim of Hutchison, 'Supernaturalism'.

104 Cited in Willey, Eighteenth-Century Background, p. 152. I have usedWilley's translation (with the minor addition of the words in squarebrackets), as it is faithful to the original passage which can befound in Holbach, Système, vol. 1, pp. 29-30. D'Holbach's unsettlingnaturalism was echoed by the Marquis de Sade in his 1782 Dialogueentre un Prêtre et un Moribond. De Sade's dying atheist challengedthe priest who was trying to elicit his repentance with the words:'My friend, prove to me that matter is inert, and I will grant youthe Creator. Prove to me that nature is not self-sufficient, and Iwill allow you to presume she has a master.' Sade, Oeuvrescomplètes, vol. 14, p. 56.

supernatural intervention in nature, for inert matter plainly

required spirit in order to move.(103) Priestley, however, had

taken away this critical function of spirit by insisting that

matter was active and not at all distinct from spirit. The

theological consequences of such a view were underscored by

Priestley's notorious contemporary, the French Baron d'Holbach,

in the latter's Système de la nature (1770). There, d'Holbach,

an avowed atheist, presented a monistic conception of matter very

similar to that of Priestley. 'If by "Nature"', d'Holbach

submitted,(104)

we understand a mass of dead material, devoid of allproperties and entirely passive, we shall doubtless becompelled to search outside this Nature for the principle ofits movements. But if by Nature we understand that which itreally is, a whole of which the various parts have variousproperties, behave in accordance with these properties, andare in a state of perpetual interaction upon each other ...then we shall have no need to have recourse to supernaturalforces in order to account for the [formation of] objectsand the phenomena that we see.

For d'Holbach, the political ramifications of such a theory of

active matter were obvious, for the belief in supernature, he

argued, was a strategy of priests and tyrants to delude ordinary

citizens into accepting their earthly misery. He complained

particularly about the doctrine of a life after death which 'has

become the basis of almost all religious and political systems

... The founders of religions have used it to bind their gullible

disciples; legislators have considered it as the most effective


105 Holbach, Système, vol. 1, p. 332.


way of keeping their subjects under the yoke ...'.(105)

Therefore, if physics were to demonstrate that such beliefs found

no support in nature, those in power could not so easily exploit

them for political ends. While Priestley by no means embraced

d'Holbach's militant atheism, he clearly shared the Frenchman's

sentiments regarding the political abuses of institutionalized

religion, and also believed that his own deterministic monism

would provide an antidote to the obscurantism of a conservative

Establishment.

Coleridge's Unitarian hostility to established religion and

politics was doubtless sustained by Priestley's monistic ontology

as well as by the rational approach to phenomena that

characterized mechanistic Necessitarianism. Priestley in fact

insisted that the various perspectives he defended were

interrelated:(106)

the three doctrines of materialism, of that which iscommonly called Socinianism, and of philosophicalnecessity, are equally parts of one system, being equallyfounded on just observations of nature, and fairdeductions from the scriptures ... .

The political implications of this system, which Coleridge

zealously espoused in the mid-1790s, were unambiguous, for each

part of it was subversive of traditional authority. The natural

philosophy that Coleridge early on embraced, then, was

inextricably bound up with political and religious heterodoxy.

Subsequently, Coleridge came to oppose the outlook on nature

that he held in this period. This famous change is generally put

down to his avowed dissatisfaction with what he claimed to be the

philosophical inadequacies and atheistic tendencies of this

outlook. However, this interpretation is highly misleading, for


it ignores the political concerns that we have noted as being

inseparable from his early thinking about natural philosophy.

Coleridge's later thought, as we shall see, continued to exhibit

the same fundamental conviction that natural and social

philosophies are interconnected.

p.66

1 My discussion here of British politics at the end of the eighteenthcentury is based on: Goodwin, Friends of Liberty, 1979, passim, butespecially pp. 267-74, 303-6, 332-58, 387-90, 403-15; Dickinson,Liberty and Property, pp. 232-318; idem, Politics of the People,pp. 237-54, 276-86; Cobban, History, vol. 1, pp. 177-80, 203-4,208-18.

CHAPTER II: 'JACOBIN SCIENCE'—

SCIENTIFIC POLITICS IN LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN

II.1 Introduction

As we have already mentioned, the years immediately after the

French Revolution saw politics in Britain as dominated by calls

for reform and fear that rebellion might spread across the

Channel.(1) Reacting against the pressure for change and the

ever-present threat of invasion, the British government adopted

various repressive political measures. Many of these were

direct, in the form of gagging legislation or litigation against

suspected fomenters of sedition. Indirectly, the governing

classes also undertook a war of propaganda to arouse patriotic

feeling against all who professed revolutionary, or even merely

reformist, ideas.

As in all propagandist hostilities, a major weapon in this

war was namecalling, and one of the names that the British

authorities found to be particularly efficacious in inciting

outrage against its domestic enemies was that of 'Jacobin'. This

term came from France where the revolutionary Jacobin Club, under

the leadership of Maximilien Robespierre, had come to dominate

the new republican Convention in the years 1792-94. The Jacobins

were the most radical of the revolutionary clubs, and espoused an

extreme egalitarianism. The anxiety that their policies provoked

abroad was exacerbated by the mass executions of supposed

traitors under the notorious Terror of 1793-94 in which the

Ch.II: 'Jacobin Science' p.67

2 Thompson, English Working Class, pp. 171-2.

3 Thelwall, Rights of Nature, p. 454, cited in Thompson, EnglishWorking Class, p. 200. The term, 'Gothic custumary', is a referenceto the old Germanic customary laws, upon which the feudal system wasbuilt. The term is repeatedly taken to task throughout Thelwall'sRights of Nature which was directed at Burke's 1796 Letters on aRegicide Peace. In the first of Burke's letters, the term was infact invoked to defend the traditional social order of Europe againstthe innovations 'of the Jacobin republic'. Burke claimed that 'thewhole of the polity and economy of every country in Europe ... wasdrawn from the old Germanic or Gothic custumary, from the feudalinstitutions which must be considered as an emanation from thatcustumary; and the whole has been improved and digested into systemand discipline by the Roman law.' Burke, Works, vol. 5, pp. 305-6.

Jacobins were instrumental. So to be called a 'Jacobin' in

Britain suggested that one would stop at nothing to overthrow the

existing social hierarchy.

Those in Britain to whom the label of 'Jacobin' was most

often applied were industrial artisans who agitated for major

social and political reform, taking particular inspiration from

the popular writings of Thomas Paine.(2) The designation was

proudly accepted by some. The radical leader, John Thelwall, for

instance, saw it as aptly denoting a broad political programme

which sought to reform the feudal practices and institutions of

the old rule. In his 1796 Rights of Nature, against the

Usurpations of Establishments. A Series of Letters to the

People, in Reply to the False Principles of Burke, Thelwall

boldly summed up the aspirations of his working-class comrades:

'I adopt the term Jacobinism without hesitation', he there

declared,(3)

1. Because it is fixed upon us, as a stigma, by ourenemies ... 2. Because, although I abhor the sanguinaryferocity of the late Jacobins in France, yet theirprinciples ... are the most consonant with my ideas ofreason, and the nature of man, of any that I have metwith ... I use the term Jacobinism simply to indicate alarge and comprehensive system of reform, not professingto be built upon the authorities and principles of theGothic custumary.


Despite these working-class applications, the term 'Jacobin'

was also used by the ruling elite in Britain in a more general

sense, to refer to any vocal supporter of the French Revolution

or of constitutional reform. Thus the semi-official newspaper,

The Anti-Jacobin, or Weekly Examiner, generally aimed its

criticism higher, at middle-class reformers, including the

scientific thinkers with whom Coleridge was closely associated -

the 'patriot sages' of the previous chapter. We shall examine

this criticism further below, and note that it included both

Priestley and Darwin, as well as the young Coleridge.

We shall also see that the Establishment's censure of these

'patriot sages' was directed as much against their scientific as

their political views. For, those in power unquestionably took

their opponents' natural philosophies to be politically

dangerous: the science of the 'Jacobins' was seen as promoting

their radical politics. Natural philosophy, then, was deemed to

be an important arena for fighting the ideological battles of the

time. This assumption was of course not limited to those

defending the status quo, for we have already noted that the

Necessitarian perspective on nature that Coleridge espoused in

the mid-1790s had an overt anti-authoritarian agenda.

Yet, while Coleridge and his government were clearly on

hostile terms throughout the 1790s, the lines of battle were not

particularly well defined. For the young rebel not only

challenged the British administration, but (as we have also

noted) took to task some of his radical comrades. Locating

Coleridge's position in the polarized politics of his time, then,

is not straightforward. To complicate matters further, Coleridge

attacked both his fellow revolutionaries and the British

authorities in terms similar to those found in the latter's


4 The term 'Jacobin science' has been used in the sense here by Scott,'Impact of the French Revolution', p. 475. It has also been used byShapin to refer to the scientific philosophy, described by Gillispie,that was being advocated by the Jacobin administration in Franceafter the Revolution. See: Gillispie, 'Jacobin Philosophy ofScience'; Shapin, 'Social uses of science', p. 122. Gillispie's'Jacobin philosophy of science', however, is not the same thing asthe 'Jacobin science' described here. The main contention ofGillispie's paper is that the French Jacobins held a profoundsuspicion of intellectuals and 'abstract' theories, so wished toreplace the mathematically based physics of the Académie des scienceswith a more 'democratic', utilitarian focus. This ideologicalhostility to theoretical science is not apparent in the 'Jacobinscience' decried by the British authorities. Nevertheless, there aresome interesting similarities. For example, chemistry and its viewof matter as active were seen in both contexts as linked todemocratic reform. Such connections between British and Frenchscience would be worth exploring more fully in another place.

condemnation of the 'Jacobin science'(4) with which he identified:

right-wing criticism of radical philosophies was mirrored in his

accusation that his opponents at both ends of the political

spectrum were encouraging natural philosophies with atheistic

tendencies. This confusion too will be dealt with below.

By the early 1800s, however, a much modified position had

appeared in Coleridge's political journalism, and he began to

rally behind the conservative interests of the ruling classes.

In view of the above-mentioned perceptions by him and others that

natural philosophy and politics were closely connected, one might

expect that Coleridge's altered politics would be accompanied by

a changed allegiance in natural philosophy. This we shall

observe in the following chapter. In the 1800s, a distinct

hostility emerges to the 'Jacobin science' that he had embraced

during the previous decade, and he now opposes both the politics

and the science of the 'patriot sages' as if they were

interrelated components of a single ideological programme.

The present chapter will, however, begin by examining some

earlier complaints of Coleridge's about natural philosophy.

These were from 1795 and were directed against a different group

of 'sages' - 'modern sages' as he called them - whose natural

philosophies (he claimed) tended toward atheism. These


complaints are best understood, I shall contend, as part of an

attempt at that time to uphold his own religiously informed

politics. Then will follow an account of the Establishment's

offensive on 'Jacobin' scientists - the 'patriot sages' on whose

side Coleridge initially ranged himself. Finally, this chapter

will canvass a drift in Coleridge's politics from the radicalism

of the mid-1790s to the incipient conservatism of the early 1800s

when (as we shall later see) he began to join the Establishment

in its condemnation of 'Jacobin science'. Though now following

the lead of those in power, Coleridge's new 'anti-Jacobin'

position, I shall note, reflects many of his earlier views,

especially those expressed in his criticism of the atheistic

world-view sustained by the natural philosophies of 'modern

sages'.

II.2 The 'Modern Sages'

In the first of six 'Lectures on Revealed Religion its

Corruptions and Political Views', delivered in Bristol in 1795,

the twenty-two year old Coleridge made his first public complaint

about natural philosophy. Such complaints were later to become

commonplace in his public and private pronouncements, and

frequently occurred in contexts where politics were at issue.

The same is true here. Indeed, the specific grievances about

natural philosophy expressed in his 1795 lectures were directly

connected with the political positions that he was attacking in

them. For Coleridge's broad aim in these lectures was to provide

a statement of his own idiosyncratic political position in 1795,

and to compare it with those of the other parties in the post-

revolutionary debate on political reform. In his view, the

principal defect of these other parties - whose identities will

be discussed below - was their rejection of, or disregard for,

truly Christian values in politics. In his lectures, therefore,


5 CC,1, pp. 96-100.

Coleridge aimed to show not only that the radical Pantisocratic

politics (see above pp. 30, 31) that he himself advocated was

compatible with Christianity, but also that the irreligious

politics of those he opposed was untenable. This is where

natural philosophy comes into the picture. For one way of

undermining what he took to be the atheistic world-views of his

political opponents was to bring into question the assumptions

about nature that sustained them.

So, toward the beginning of his first lecture, we find

Coleridge expressing a complaint about atheistic tendencies in

natural philosophy. Some natural philosophers, he protested,

have had the audacity to claim that 'the Phaenomena of Nature are

explicable without Deity', and so have tried to account for

natural events in terms of matter alone.(5) For Coleridge, this

idea was always unacceptable, and until the end of his life he

was to insist that spiritual causation was fundamental in nature.

In his lecture, he directed the complaint at a target he labelled

as some 'modern sages'. Who he had in mind here was not made

explicit, however, but it is reasonable to presume that it was

not the 'patriot sages' whom he was praising so highly in the

contemporaneous 'Religious Musings' (1794-6). Indeed, one can be

confident that the latter were specifically excluded from

Coleridge's criticisms in this lecture. For we have noted that

the young poet and lecturer commended the science of such

'patriot sages' as Franklin and Priestley for revealing God's

workings in nature. Coleridge's target in his lecture, then,

must have been some other tendencies in natural philosophy,

different to those of Franklin and Priestley. We shall see that

his specific objections in fact confirm this conjecture and

provide a fairly clear idea as to what this target was.


6 Ibid., pp. 96-7.

Coleridge began his offensive by claiming that there were

inconsistencies in the arguments used to reject supernaturalistic

explanations in natural philosophy. Inspired by his reading of

Ralph Cudworth's True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678),

he noted that some atheists assert that it is illogical to

suppose that something separate from the material universe can

act upon it. Such a line of reasoning, however, (Coleridge

pointed out) is seriously undermined by the widely acknowledged

action of gravity. For, according to the materialists' rationale

here, if the cause of gravity were immaterial it should not

affect matter; but if material, it would either occupy the whole

of space and thereby exclude all other matter, or be spatially

localized yet paradoxically exert a mysterious influence outside

its location (and so effectively beg the question). He went on

to maintain that, since fundamental causes in nature will always

be beyond our perceptual and rational capacities, we should not

expect to have a deeper knowledge of them than that provided by

their observable 'effects'.(6) Here Coleridge might seem to have

been recommending some form of scientific scepticism, but his

intention was not so much to deny the possibility of knowledge of

spiritual causes as to affirm their intangible reality. He was

in effect arguing that one can never be sure that phenomena are

not produced by immaterial causes.

He then went on to challenge the explanatory power of

materialistic philosophies, alleging that they were unable to

account for the structural complexity of the universe. In

imitation of Cudworth, he first of all divided atheistic natural

philosophies into two major camps: the atomistic and the

hylozoic. Closely paraphrasing Colin Maclaurin's Account of Sir

Isaac Newton's Philosophical Discoveries (1748), Coleridge

dismissed the first view - that the universe was produced 'from


7 Ibid., p. 98, and editors' notes.

8 Ibid., pp. 98-100; Cudworth, True Intellectual System, vol .1,pp. vii- viii, 46-52, 105-9, 174-5. On Cudworth's attitude towardcorpuscularian mechanical philosophy see Hutchison,'Supernaturalism', pp. 319-23.

9 CC,1, p. 100n.

the accidental play of Atoms acting according to mere mechanical

Laws' - because it was implausible to suppose that the intricate

and harmonious arrangements of nature arose 'from a lucky hit in

the Blind Uproar'.(7) He then continued by attacking the

hylozoists who attributed organization in nature to a primitive,

'plastic' or formative capacity 'inherent in each particle of

Matter'. Coleridge asserted that this position, like that of the

atomists, did not at all explain how matter was able to organize

itself into its various configurations, and, especially, how such

non-reflexive activity could produce intelligence. This argument

was taken from Cudworth, though the technical inadequacy of the

hylozoists' position, brought into question by Coleridge, had not

been Cudworth's principal concern. What had worried Cudworth

most were the theological implications of hylozoism. For if

matter contained enough of its own principles of activity, divine

agency would no longer be needed to account for physical

phenomena. Cudworth indicated, however, that such an objection

did not apply to the atomistic mechanical philosophy of his

contemporaries in which matter was regarded as inactive.(8)

What Coleridge was objecting to in the thought of 'modern

sages', then, was quite explicit. But which individuals he

believed held these atheistic world-views was left unclear. The

editors of his lectures assume that he was thinking of

philosophers censured by Cudworth, such as Hobbes and

Descartes.(9) Given the contemporary relevance of the lectures,

however, one must suspect that Coleridge had in mind more recent

natural philosophers rather than those Cudworth had been

attacking in the seventeenth century. Unfortunately for the


10 See: editors' introduction in CC,1, pp. lvi-lvii; Leask, Politics ofImagination, p. 19.

11 CL,1, pp. 294-5: to John Thelwall, 31 December 1796.

commentator, Coleridge does not provide any names. One can

reasonably presume, however, that the views of the 'modern sages'

were connected with the positions of those he was seeking to

undermine throughout the remainder of the lectures on revealed

religion - and it is already agreed that these lectures had two

principal targets.(10)

The first was a group of people who actually shared

Coleridge's hostility to the political and religious

Establishments. Like him, they favoured reform and decried the

reactionary politics of the Pitt administration and the Church's

complicity in them. For reasons that will shortly become

apparent, however, Coleridge was keen to dissociate himself from

this group, and publicly criticized it elsewhere on both

religious and political grounds. It included important radical

figures such as John Thelwall and Thomas Paine, the dramatist

Thomas Holcroft, and the philosopher and novelist, William

Godwin. Of these, only Thelwall, it seems, published views close

to those of the 'modern sages' criticized by Coleridge. I know

no concrete evidence, however, that Coleridge was familiar with

Thelwall's 1793 Essay Towards a Definition of Animal Vitality

until the end of 1796, when he wrote to its author requesting a

copy. In his essay, Thelwall had criticized the view of the

eminent eighteenth-century surgeon and anatomist, John Hunter,

that life is due to a distinct 'Vital Principle' contained in the

blood. In his letter, Coleridge correctly noted that Thelwall

held instead that life was 'the result of organized matter acted

on by external [material] Stimuli.'(11) Thelwall's position was

in fact radically materialistic. He declared that 'where there

is not matter, there there is vacuum; - where vacuum is not,

there there must be matter.' He went on to criticize the notion


12 Thelwall, Essay, pp. 35-6, 40. See also Wylie, Young Coleridge,pp. 124-8.

13 Paine, Complete Writings, p. 498.

that spirit is something distinct from matter, arguing that what

is commonly called 'spirit' merely refers to a 'more subtile

matter', 'a fine and subtile, or aeriform essence'. The means of

vital stimulation, Thelwall speculated, was 'the electrical

fluid'.(12) Were there evidence that Coleridge knew of Thelwall's

Essay at the time of his lectures, the question of the identity

of the 'modern sages' would seem to be partly solved. For the

views expressed by Thelwall fit neatly into the category of

hylozoic atheism which Coleridge had taken to task in the

lectures. But, without such evidence, the identification is

weak.

Of the remaining members of this group of radicals, the only

other one in whose published writings natural philosophy was

overtly discussed was Paine. In The Age of Reason (1794),

alluded to by Coleridge in his lectures, Paine advocated a

universal, rationalistic 'deism' to replace Christianity and

other revelatory faiths which he saw as thoroughly corrupt and

exploitative. Deism, Paine believed, avoided the deceit and

abusiveness of such religions, because it was not based on the

mysterious authority of a priestly class and its scriptures. For

Paine, evidence of a deity was not to be found in sacred books,

but through a scientific examination of nature. His deism thus

entailed 'contemplating the power, wisdom and benignity of the

Deity in His works, and in endeavoring to imitate Him in

everything moral, scientifical and mechanical.'(13) So, to this

end of discovering divine design in nature, natural philosophy

was essential. Echoing others who had similarly advanced a

natural, as opposed to a revealed, religion, Paine maintained

that what 'is now called natural philosophy ... is the study of


14 Ibid., p. 487.

15 CC,1, pp. 149-50.

16 Ibid., pp. 98, 100.

the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in His

works, and is the true theology.'(14)

At the beginning of his third lecture on revealed religion,

Coleridge explicitly attacked Paine's theological views. They

displayed, he maintained, 'dogmatic Ignorance', and he dismissed

them as ineffectual by comparison with Paine's political

writings. He then went on to insist that the truth of revealed

prophecies was verifiable in the same manner in which God's

existence could be established from observation of nature: by

attending to the evidence of design in human events. But Paine,

Coleridge erroneously claimed, had rejected the famous argument

from design held by his predecessors: 'what to the eye of Thomas

Paine appears a chaos of Unintelligibles Sir Isaac Newton and

John Locke and David Hartley discover to be miraculous Order, and

Wisdom more than human.'(15) This misrepresentation of Paine's

views is revealing. For it indicates that Coleridge took Paine

to hold a natural philosophy that closely resembled that of the

'modern sages' who believed that nature was the product of 'the

accidental play of Atoms acting according to mere mechanical

Laws'. It is quite likely, then, that Coleridge had someone like

Paine in mind in his attack on 'modern sages' who 'exclude our

God and Untenant the Universe'.(16)

That Coleridge took Paine to task for embracing such an

atheistic cosmology, however, suggests that he was not in fact

thinking primarily of natural philosophers when attacking 'modern

sages'. We have already noted that one of the principal

objections to the politics of his opponents was what he saw as

their rejection of religious values. As he perceived his

political opponents to be hostile to religion, it would be


17 Coleridge's positive view of Godwin is apparent in a letter of 1794,where he expressed his intention 'in the book of Pantisocracy ... tohave comprised all that is good in Godwin'. CL,1, p. 115: to RobertSouthey, 21 October 1794.

18 Godwin, Political Justice, vol. 2, p. 852. This passage was firstdrawn to my attention in CC,1, p. 164n.1.

19 CC,1, p. 162.

tempting for him then to see them as subscribing to atheistic

natural philosophies, whether they explicitly advocated such

positions or not. So, Coleridge's assault on the 'modern sages'

might best be read as an attempt to undermine the 'atheistic'

position of his radical adversaries. Indeed, such a reading is

supported by his treatment of Godwin, the main figure within the

radical group he was targetting.

Although some aspects of Godwin's thought were congenial to

Coleridge,(17) he strongly objected to what he judged to be its

too 'rational' conception of morality, its disregard for

sentiment and tradition. In An Enquiry concerning Political

Justice (1793), for example, Godwin had stated, 'I ought to

prefer no human being to another, because that being is my

father, my wife or my son, but because, for reasons which equally

appeal to all understandings, that being is entitled to

preference.'(18) Coleridge opposed this dispassionate ethics, and

argued that it failed to take into account the psychology of the

individual's moral development. As a disciple of Hartley,

Coleridge believed that the transformation of initially self-

centred motives into selfless ones was a learnt process, and that

benevolence could only be acquired after having first known such

a feeling in the reduced context of one's family and friendships.

'The most expansive Benevolence', the young lecturer maintained,

'is that effected and rendered permanent by social and domestic

affections.'(19)

While Coleridge clearly valued such personal and familial

attachments in themselves, his defence of them against Godwin was


20 Ibid.

21 Godwin, Political Justice, vol. 2, p. 797.

22 CL,1, p. 267: to Benjamin Flower, 11 December 1796.

motivated also by the indispensable role that he, following

Hartley, felt they played in providing the foundation for

religious feeling. Echoing Hartley, Coleridge asserted that such

'filial and domestic affections discipline the heart and prepare

it for that blessed state of perfection in which all our Passions

are to be absorbed in the Love of God.'(20) Godwin had assigned

no importance at all to religious feeling in Political Justice,

and in that work he had even shown himself to be openly hostile

to religion, declaring that(21)

Religion is in reality in all its parts an accommodationto the prejudices and weaknesses of mankind. Its authorscommunicated to the world as much truth, as theycalculated that the world would be willing to receive.But it is time that we should lay aside the instructionintended only for children in understanding, andcontemplate the nature and principles of things.

Coleridge's profound concern about the absence of a religious

underpinning to Godwin's social philosophy was manifest in a 1796

letter in which he professed to be planning a response to the

philosopher which was(22)

designed to shew not only the absurdities and wickednessof his System, but to detect ... the defects of all thesystems of morality before & since Christ, & to shew thatwherein they have been right, they have exactly coincidedwith the Gospel, and that each has erred exactly where &in porportion as, he has deviated from that perfectcanon.

But behind Coleridge's religious misgivings about Godwin's

secular moral philosophy was a deeper apprehension which was made

more explicit in his late 1795 pamphlet, Conciones ad Populum, or

Addresses to the People, and which reveals a paternalistic

élitism that is fundamental to all Coleridge's political thought.

Here, Coleridge maintained that Godwin was wrong in assuming that


23 CC,1, pp. 43-4.

everyone had the ability to make rational, moral choices. For

the uneducated, poorer classes, in particular, required guidance

in morality - guidance that Coleridge thought only religion could

supply. Moreover, such moral guidance was especially desirable

in the socially unstable climate of the times. Thus, in

deliberate opposition to Godwin, Coleridge argued in the

Conciones that 'in that barbarous tumult of inimical Interests,

which the present state of Society exhibits, Religion appears to

offer the only means universally efficient [by which] the lower

Classes [can] be made to learn their Duties, and urged to

practise them'.(23) The strong implication here was that, without

the moral restraint fostered by religion, the poor might be

incited to follow 'interests' that threatened social stability.

Such caveats about the political maturity of the poor are not

hard to understand, but were especially evident to Coleridge in

the way the uneducated masses in both France and Britain had

recently been used as instruments of terror against middle-class

intellectuals such as Priestley. The Conciones warned about

adopting Robespierre's violent methods in Britain, and urged its

readers to consider just who were the nation's 'friends of

liberty'. One of the four 'classes' of 'friends' that Coleridge

described consisted of those 'sufficiently possessed of natural

sense to despise the Priest, and of natural feeling to hate the

Oppressor'. This group, however, was susceptible to suggestion

from 'sanguinary Demagogues', such as 'the sable-vested

Instigators of the Birmingham riots'. With Priestley's fate

still probably in mind, the 'Introductory Address' of the

Conciones concluded with admonitions to Coleridge's fellow

reformists to be wary of provoking violence by what they said:

'Let us not wantonly offend ... the prejudices of our weaker


24 Ibid., pp. 35-8, 48.

25 See Roe, Radical Years, pp. 116-7. E. P. Thompson, however, takesissue with Roe on Godwin's influence on Thelwall. Thompson,'Wordsworth's Crisis', p. 5. Yet, whether or not Thelwall was aGodwinian, Coleridge appears to have seen him as such. AlthoughColeridge subsequently became friendly with Thelwall, he was stillclearly concerned about the radical leader's authority over thepoorer classes. Thus, in a 1797 letter written to a third party toobtain a cottage for Thelwall in Coleridge's neighbourhood, Coleridgeadmitted that it would be politically risky if a radical ofThelwall's stature were to move to the area. He nonetheless arguedthat the company Thelwall would find might usefully temper theradical leader's 'natural impetuosity'. For 'if the day of darkness& tempest should come,' the millenarian Coleridge warned, 'it is mostprobable, that the influence of T[helwall] would be very great on thelower classes'. CL,1, p. 342: to John Chubb, 20 August 1797.Coleridge, of course, would also have been concerned about theconsiderable influence that Paine wielded on the poorer sections ofsociety. Thompson notes that although the content of The Age ofReason was not particularly novel, its audience was. While similarviews had already been publicized within a middle-class, dissentingor free-thinking milieu, Paine's work was aimed at a wider, popularaudience, and consequently caused concern among the ruling classes.Thompson, English Working Class, pp. 105-6.

26 CC,2, pp. 98-100: March 17, 1796. Lewis Patton - the editor of thisvolume of Coleridge's works - argues that the targets of this articlewere most probably Thelwall and other notable radicals. See ibid.,p. 98n.3.

brethren, nor by ill-timed and vehement declarations of opinion

excite in them malignant feelings towards us.'(24)

Godwin's philosophy, Coleridge believed, failed to take

account of the educational disparity between the rich and the

poor and of the need for the moderating influence of religion on

the latter. However, he perceived it to be gaining popularity

with radical leaders like Thelwall who were lecturing to the

poorer working classes.(25) In a 1796 article entitled 'Modern

Patriotism' in his periodical The Watchman, for example,

Coleridge took to task the radical orators who had 'studied Mr.

Godwin's Essay on Political Justice'. He accused them of being

self-seeking and not really having the welfare of the poor at

heart. Moreover, true patriots, he argued, 'must condescend to

believe in a God, and in the existence of a Future State!'(26)

After meeting Godwin's friend Thomas Holcroft in late 1794,

Coleridge complained that 'he absolutely infests you with


27 CL,1, p. 139: to Robert Southey, 17 December 1794; ibid., p. 214: toJohn Thelwall, 13 May 1796.

28 CC,1, p. 58.

29 'Religious Musings', l. 334, PW,1, p. 121.

Atheism'. Similarly, in a 1796 letter to Thelwall, Coleridge

openly expressed his misgivings about the politics of his

correspondent and the latter's 'Atheistic Brethren'.(27)

Coleridge's concern to combat the 'atheistic' politics of Paine,

Godwin, and those within Godwin's circle would have prompted him

to attack atheism more generally in his 1795 lectures. His

criticism of the natural philosophies of 'modern sages', then,

can be read as part of a strategy to undermine such 'atheistic'

politics - that of the extreme left.

The 1795 lectures on revealed religion, however, had a second

explicit target, one at the opposite end of the political

spectrum. This was the Church Establishment which, Coleridge

believed, had corrupted the original, spiritual and political

ideals of Christianity. His criticism of the atheism of 'modern

sages' should also be viewed as directed against this target, for

he saw the religious and political Establishments as espousing

Christian principles in name only. In the Conciones, for

example, he claimed that the British government's brutality

during the American War of Independence had made the colonists

realize that their opponents were 'practical Atheists, professing

to believe a God, yet acting as if there were none.'(28)

Elsewhere, at this time, he also depicted the Church of England

as a 'mitred Atheism'.(29) But, in the lectures on revealed

religion, his attack on the Church and the political system it

supported, was largely meant to demonstrate to his radical

companions-in-arms that, behind the corrupt beliefs and practices

of official religion, there was a genuine, uncorrupted

Christianity which had political relevance in 1795. So, by

rebuking the Church in his lectures, Coleridge was in effect


30 Southey's final rewriting of the poem most probably took place, withColeridge's collaboration, between May and August, 1795, thussignificantly overlapping with Coleridge's lectures in May and June.See Whalley, '"Joan of Arc"', p. 68.

31 Southey, Joan of Arc, Bk. 2, ll. 29-35, 37, pp. 40-1. The footnoteoccurs on pp. 41-42. Some twenty years down the track, as we shallsee, the lines quoted here were used to refer to a quite differentenemy.

attempting to affirm his own Christian radicalism in the face of

an influential, atheistic one. It was this atheistic radicalism,

then, and not the corrupt Church Establishment, which he

primarily sought to undermine by attacking natural philosophies

that excluded God from nature.

Corroboration for this interpretation of the attack on

'modern sages' is provided by a similar, contemporary complaint

about atheistic natural philosophies found in a long footnote

included in one of Coleridge's sections of Joan of Arc (written

mainly by Southey and published in 1796).(30) This two-page

diatribe on atheistic philosophies might initially come as a

surprise in a poem that is modelled on the epic style of Milton

and is essentially a political allegory. Nevertheless, the

footnote can be seen as having some bearing on the subject matter

of this part of the poem, which is meant to describe the

influence of 'preternatural agency' on the events of Joan's life.

It refers to a part of the poem, where Coleridge complains about

an atheistic tendency in natural philosophy. In the poem, those

who apparently embrace this philosophy are Joan's enemies - the

English authorities - whose religious pretensions are clearly

fraudulent. By contrast with Joan's spirituality, they show too

great an attachment to the material world:(31)

But some there are who deem themselves most free,When they within this gross and visible sphereChain down the winged thought, scoffing ascentProud in their meanness: and themselves they cheatWith noisy emptiness of learned phrase,Their subtle fluids, impacts, essences,


Self-working Tools, uncaus'd Effects ...Untenanting Creation of its God.

Of course, the kind of natural philosophy that Coleridge

portrayed here did not exist in the fourteenth century. The

mention of 'subtle fluids' and 'impacts' obviously refers to some

of the post-Newtonian natural philosophies which employed both

the concept of a subtle, aetherial medium pervading space, and

that of impacts between atomistic particles to explain material

phenomena. As Joan of Arc was plainly allegorical, Coleridge

here was challenging a current point of view that he felt

represented the position of those he was criticizing in the poem.

The contemporary embodiment of the English army and clergy who

fought against Joan was the British government (in complicity

with the Church of England) recently defeated in America and now

pursuing an unjust war against France and a policy of repression

at home. This part of the allegory, then, can be interpreted as

conveying a sense of what Coleridge saw as the too worldly values

of the British Establishment at that time. But we shall see

below that, as in the lectures, it can be read as also condemning

that other group whose interests were opposed to the spiritually

oriented politics that he was advocating in the mid-1790s: the

atheistic radicals mentioned above who shared much (though not

all) of his political vision. First of all, however, we need to

look at the detailed objections contained in Coleridge's

footnote, which is attached to the line mentioning 'subtle

fluids, impacts, essences'.

Coleridge's overt target in this note was Newton's notion of

a subtle aetherial fluid (as proposed in the Queries to the 1717

edition of the Opticks as a means of accounting for gravity and

diverse physiological and optical phenomena). Yet, his attack on

the Newtonian aether appears to have been directed primarily at

his mentor Hartley's use of it. For he provided a description of

the aether's operation taken directly from Hartley, and observed


32 The passages from which Coleridge borrowed can be found in: Hartley,Observations, p. 13; Baxter, Enquiry, pp. 34-6.

33 Newton, Opticks, pp. 350-1.

that the aether provided the vital mechanism for Hartley's

vibrationary psychophysiology.

This, however, seems to contradict the enthusiasm with which

we saw (p. 24) the young poet applauding Hartley's aetherial

speculations in the contemporary 'Religious Musings' (1794-96).

The solution to this problem is soon found, for we shall see that

Coleridge's discontent in his footnote was not really with the

technical application of the aether which he openly admired in

'Religious Musings'.

Nevertheless, the note initially conveys the impression that

Coleridge found the physical details of the aether to be

problematical. For he included criticism of Newton's theory on

technical grounds, reproducing verbatim some objections taken

from Andrew Baxter's Newtonian An Enquiry into the Nature of the

Human Soul (1733).(32) The first objection concerned Newton's

explanation of attraction as a result of the graded density of an

aetherial medium. Newton had argued that the aether was less

rarefied in the empty spaces between bodies than in the pores

within them, and that it became increasingly dense with distance

from any body. Bodies or parts of bodies, he asserted, would

naturally tend to move towards portions of the aether that were

less dense, thus accounting for gravitational attraction between

bodies.(33) Baxter complained that, according to this hypothesis,

the density of the aether in a body would never be constant, but

would vary in relation to the sizes of other bodies to which it

gravitated. Coleridge, however, maintained in his note that he

was not fully convinced by this reasoning and directed the reader

to an additional argument by Baxter which he deemed to be more

persuasive. The power imputed to the aether, Baxter maintained,


meant that it should have a density equivalent to the most

compact substance on Earth that it was purportedly able to move.

But if this were the case, he claimed, it would be impenetrable

to any other less dense object. Even Newton's assumption that

matter is highly porous was dismissed by Baxter as an inadequate

and ad hoc solution to the problem of the aether's requiring the

same density as the bodies it moves.

Coleridge's literal duplication of Baxter's complaints,

without any commentary on them, suggests that the technical

debate surrounding the Newtonian aether did not essentially

matter to him. Indeed, the final section of his footnote reveals

that his prime concern was, rather, with the theological

implications of such a concept. 'Sir Isaac Newton's philosophy',

he claimed,

leads in its consequences to Atheism ... For if matter,by any powers or properties given to it, can produce theorder of the visible world and even generate thought; whymay it not have possessed such properties by inherentright? and where is the necessity of a God?

This is strikingly similar to the kind of complaint made by

Cudworth (see above, pp. 68, 69) whose work Coleridge drew upon

in his first Bristol lecture on revealed religion to rebut modern

versions of hylozoism: if any power to originate both

organization in nature and intelligence were attributed to matter

itself, there would then be no need to invoke a creative Deity to

explain their genesis. For Coleridge, Newton's aether appeared

to have just such animating properties. Although it was

material, it also seemed to have the activating capability that

had often been assigned by seventeenth-century mechanical

philosophers to spirit alone. Hartley, from whom Coleridge had

largely gleaned his understanding of the aether, had in fact

credited it with a wide range of effects. He believed that

Newton had made it the source not only of gravitation and some

optical and physiological phenomena, but also of electricity,


34 Thus, like many eighteenth-century Newtonians, Hartley confused theproperties of the aether with those of the 'subtle spirit' describedin the General Scholium added to the second, 1713 edition of thePrincipia. On the significant differences between these two kinds ofsubtle medium, see Home, 'Newton's Subtle Matter', pp. 196-9.

35 Baxter, Enquiry, pp. 121-5, 27-39.

cohesion and heat transmission.(34) The active spirit/ passive

matter distinction that might sustain a supernaturalistic

cosmology was positively undermined by such an idea; the active

role of spirit was being taken over by a material aether.

Coleridge complained in his footnote that 'Newton's Deity seems

... to have delegated so much power as to make it inconceivable

what he can have reserved. He is dethroned by Vice-regent second

causes.'

Such theological objections echoed the substance of Baxter's

dissatisfaction with the Newtonian aether. Like Cudworth, Baxter

had affirmed that matter's inertness supported the existence of a

separate, active realm of spirit: the mechanical philosophy could

not explain the origin of movement, for which it was necessary to

look beyond the material world. Newton's philosophy, which

Baxter called upon in support of his claim, had also treated

matter as fundamentally inactive. But the hypothesis of the

aether, Baxter believed, obscured an inescapable truth: the

motion of matter was due to an immaterial cause.(35) His

refutation of the aether was thus integral to the aim of his

work, which was to reaffirm a Cartesian distinction between

active spirit and passive matter. The importance of this

distinction for Baxter was its usefulness in combatting atheism.

He claimed 'that to begin with examining the nature of matter,

and shewing its inactivity, makes the shortest work with Atheists

of all denominations.' Consequently, he specifically attacked

philosophies such as those of Hobbes and Spinoza that denied the

Cartesian distinction. He also took Locke to task for suggesting

that matter might possess a God-given capacity for thought, for


36 Ibid., pp. 80-2, 341-6. See Locke, Essay, 4.3.6, (pp. 333-4). Onthe significance of Cartesian dualism in Baxter's philosophy, seeMetzger, Attraction universelle, pp. 166-76.

37 See the quote from one of Coleridge's notebooks in Beer, Coleridge'sPoetic Intelligence, p. 79.

this notion blurred the sharp division between inert matter and

active spirit that Baxter and others deemed to be theologically

crucial.(36)

The young Coleridge's reiteration of Baxter's concerns shows

that the latter certainly made a strong impression on him.

Indeed, later in life, he vividly recalled the pleasure he had

had reading Baxter while tramping with Southey through the

English countryside and elaborating initial plans for

Pantisocracy, just shortly before the two poets' collaboration on

the political allegory of Joan of Arc.(37) So, it is easy to see

how Baxter's reflections on theology and natural philosophy could

come to be juxtaposed with the radical political sympathies that

were expressed in the poem. But there was a good reason for

Coleridge's inclusion of Baxter's ideas here. As we saw above,

Coleridge's revolutionary attitude was qualified by a hostility

to other radicals whose 'atheistic' political agenda he opposed.

Baxter appeared to Coleridge to have located a highly influential

source of atheism in aether-invoking natural philosophies.

Therefore, by restating Baxter's complaints about the Newtonian

aether, Coleridge could simultaneously affirm his own religiously

informed position and endeavour to undermine the 'atheistic'

radicalism of his peers.

Just as in his lectures, then, Coleridge's criticism of

atheistic philosophies in Joan of Arc can be read as intended for

his fellow revolutionaries. It was clearly, however, also meant

as a rebuke to the religious duplicity of Britain's rulers, whose

brutal repression of reform constituted a travesty of

Christianity, comparable to the English burning of Joan of Arc.


38 CL,1, p. 372: to John Prior Estlin, 16 January 1798.

But the alliance between the Church and political reaction did

not mean that Christian values should be dismissed from politics.

For reform without a religious framework, Coleridge felt, would

have dangerous repercussions. So the corruption of the Church

Establishment, he contended, was no excuse for secular politics,

and, in his lectures on revealed religion and in Joan of Arc, he

challenged the atheistic views of his fellow revolutionaries as

well as the irreligious conduct of his government. We shall

later see that, throughout the rest of the decade, he in fact

continued to criticize both groups from a religious standpoint

similar to that found in his attacks in 1795.

II.3 The Establishment Assault on 'Jacobin Science'

What is notable in Coleridge's censure of opposing political

views in Joan of Arc and his lectures is that he took his

opponents' natural philosophies to be a vital expression of these

views. Indeed, as we saw in the previous chapter, his own

radical politics in the mid-1790s were sustained by Priestley's

immaterialistic physics, which he saw as offering strong support

for the idea of spiritual causation in nature and society. His

high opinion of Priestley - 'patriot, and saint, and sage' - was

still evident later in the decade, and in 1798 he declared

himself as regarding 'every experiment that Priestly made in

Chemistry, as giving wings to his more sublime theological

works.'(38) The ruling classes, however, did not share this

enthusiasm. They did, however, share Coleridge's belief that

opposing political views were sustained by opposing natural

philosophies, and throughout the 1790s took to task the science

of Priestley in terms similar to those used by Coleridge to

criticize the 'modern sages'. They thus complained that the


39 Unlike Priestley, however, Price was an Arian Unitarian. On this andother doctrinal differences between Priestley and Price, see Watts,The Dissenters, pp. 471-6.

40 Price, Discourse, p. 196.

scientific views of Priestley and his 'Jacobin' circle were

atheistic, and portrayed these views as connected with

revolutionary politics.

One of the most ardent defenders of the established order

here was Edmund Burke, whose famous Reflections on the Revolution

in France (1790) was largely directed at Nonconformist supporters

of the Revolution, like Priestley and Priestley's Unitarian

friend, Richard Price.(39) Price was well-known for his advocacy

of the rights of the American colonists during the War of

Independence and for his defence of civil rights in Britain. It

was in fact his sermon, A Discourse on the Love of our Country,

delivered in November 1789 to the recently founded 'Society for

Commemorating the [1688] Revolution in Great Britain', which

prompted Burke to write the Reflections. In his sermon, Price

applauded the principles endorsed by the Glorious Revolution, but

argued that it was incomplete. While he conceded that gains in

civil and religious liberties had been made since 1688, he

complained that religious freedom was still restricted by the

Test and Corporation Acts, and that the existing parliamentary

system of representation was inadequate and corrupt. The sermon

concluded with praise of the American and French revolutions and

with a severe admonition to those who continued to obstruct the

inevitable course of reform.(40)

Tremble all ye oppressors of the world! Take warning allye supporters of slavish governments and slavishhierarchies! ... You cannot now hold the world indarkness. Struggle no longer against increasing lightand liberality. Restore to mankind their rights andconsent to the correction of abuses, before they and youare destroyed together.


41 Burke, Reflections, p. 9.

42 Ibid., p. 55. The attribution of this quotation to Priestley is madeby the editor in a note on p. 343, where he refers the reader toPriestley's History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782). Thepassage can be found in Priestley, History, vol. 2, p. 484. Justbefore he left Britain for America, Priestley argued that his public'hostility to the doctrines of the established church, and moreespecially to all civil establishments of religion whatever' was theonly reason for his harassment by the authorities in league withBurke. He also claimed that the anti-revolutionary riots around thecountry were specifically directed against the Dissenters.Priestley, Present State of Europe, pp. xii-xiii, vi-vii. See alsopp. 43-4.

Price's public support of events in France and exhortation to

his countryfellows to follow the French example alarmed Burke

who, in the Reflections, attacked Price, claiming that the latter

was in league with 'literary caballers, and intriguing

philosophers; with political theologians, and theological

politicians, both at home and abroad.'(41) In Burke's mind, the

political theologian Priestley was plainly associated with such a

conspiracy. For he later quotes Priestley explicitly, to attack

a passage expressing the hope that the Church of England be

disestablished: that 'perhaps we must wait for the fall of the

civil powers before this most unnatural alliance [between church

and state] be broken.'(42)

Priestley had typically spoken from the standpoint of a

Dissenter, so it is not surprising to find Burke, elsewhere at

this time, specifically singling out this group as a major threat

to social order. In his 1791 Thoughts on French Affairs, the

conservative statesman characterized the British partisans of the

'levelling' politics of 'the French Rights of Men' as

'comprehending most of the dissenters of the three leading

denominations ... [and] all who are dissenters in character,

temper, and disposition'. This 'levelling' contingent was fairly

broad. It included some Whigs and Tories, 'all the Atheists,

Deists, and Socinians', and especially the new, commercial,


43 Burke, Thoughts on French Affairs, ..., in Burke, Reflections,pp. 291-2.

44 Burke's favourable attitude before 1789 to toleration of Dissent andrepeal of the Test and Corporation Acts is discussed by Henriques,Religious Toleration in England, pp. 104-15. Besides the politicalmotive for Burke's change of heart towards the Dissenters, Henriquesindicates that Burke also had a more personal motive due to theiropportunistic support for his parliamentary rivals during the 1780s.See also Kramnick, Rage of Edmund Burke, pp. 149-50.


46 Burke, Thoughts on French Affairs, ..., in Burke, Reflections,pp. 314-15.

middle classes.(43) Dissenters, as we have already noted, were

conspicuous in the latter social category.

It was not, however, Dissent in itself that worried Burke,

but the reformist politics of the Dissenters which had received

impetus from the successful overthrow of the old regime in

France.(44) The social order defended by Burke was threatened by

such a movement, so he sought to expose what he took to be its

most subversive features. The most explicit among these was

certainly its challenge to established religion; for 'Religion',

he maintained in the Reflections, 'is the basis of civil

society'.(45) In the Thoughts on French Affairs (1791), he

rhetorically depicted Priestley - one of the most outspoken

opponents of a state church - as part of an international

alliance of 'atheists' who(46)

of late ... are grown active, designing, turbulent, andseditious. They are sworn enemies to kings, nobility,and priesthood. We have seen all the academicians atParis, with Condorcet, the friend and correspondent ofPriestley, at their head, the most furious of theextravagant republicans.

This link alleged here by Burke between Priestley, atheism,

republicanism, and the French Académie des Sciences of which the

mathematician and philosophe the Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794)

was permanent secretary, is telling. For it clearly indicates

not only that Burke's ostensible objections to Priestley's


47 Besides Condorcet who was a member of the Legislative Assembly andthe Convention, the eminent astronomer Jean-Sylvain Bailly(1736-1793) (also criticized by Burke) became the first president ofthe National Assembly, and shortly after mayor of Paris.Dictionnaire de Biographie Française: vol. 9, pp. 458-9,s.v. 'Condorcet'; vol. 4, pp. 1347-53, s.v. 'Bailly'. Gillispiementions a number of other less well-known scientific figures whoheld important political positions in the new republic. Many ofthese were members of the French Linnaean Society, reformed after theRevolution under the name of the Société d'histoire naturelle.Gillispie, 'Jacobin Philosophy of Science', pp. 267-8.

48 Burke's hostility to Priestley's chemistry is discussed by Crosland,'Science as a Threat', pp. 281-8, and Golinski, Science as PublicCulture, pp. 176-86.

49 Cited in Crosland, 'Science as a Threat', pp. 285-6.

religious position were really driven by political hostility, but

also that Burke understood the scientific community as playing a

major role in the offending politics. In France this was

manifestly the case,(47) but it also confirms my repeated claims

that in Britain too there was a definite connection between the

radicals' science and their politics.

For Burke, such a connection could be demonstrated rather

mundanely, through Priestley's specialty, chemistry.(48) To begin

with, Priestley had deliberately used incendiary imagery taken

from chemistry to illustrate his arguments. In a 1787 sermon,

for example, he had explained the inevitability of reform by

suggesting metaphorically that the Dissenters were placing

gunpowder 'under the old building of error and superstition', and

so only 'a single spark' would suffice to bring it down.

Priestley publicly used the analogy again in 1790, but with far

more menacing undertones. Such an explosion as that recently

witnessed in France, he warned, might easily take place in

Britain and would most likely be set off by the established

Church.(49) Burke seems to have had this in mind in the

Reflections where, after alluding to Priestley's aspirations for

the Church's disestablishment, he claimed that the

revolutionaries 'have wrought under ground a mine that will blow

up, at one grand explosion, all examples of antiquity, all



51 Crosland, 'Science as a Threat', pp. 283-4, 287-8. The quotation ison p. 288, and is taken from Thomas George Street, A Reply to aLetter from the Rt. Hon Edmund Burke to a Noble Lord. Being aVindication of the Duke of Bedford's Attack upon Mr Burke's Pension.(London, 1796), p. 23.

52 Lovejoy, Essays, pp. 79-81.

precedents, charters, and acts of parliament.'(50) As Crosland

points out, there are a number of places where Burke similarly

used the chemical metaphor to convey a sense of the flammable

situation in France, and also to denigrate the revolutionary

cause by drawing parallels with alchemy. More direct criticisms

of the French chemists, however, appeared in Burke's 1796 Letter

to a Noble Lord, which elicited a protest from one Thomas George

Street who argued that Burke was going overboard by maligning

what even those outside France applauded as worthwhile progress

in chemistry. Street added that 'the mention of chymical

operations naturally connects with it, in Mr Burke's, as well as

in every other person's mind, the name of Priestley'.(51)

It was not, however, the petty destructive metaphors provided

by Priestley's chemistry that most worried Burke. Far more

significant than this concern was a deep uneasiness about the way

in which Priestley and the French revolutionaries had apparently

applied a radically uniformitarian outlook, borrowed from their

view of nature, to social and political questions.

Uniformitarianism, Lovejoy has argued, was the primary feature of

Enlightenment thought.(52) It was a perspective based on the

assumption that an extreme regularity underlies the seeming

diversity of human thought and behaviours - an assumption,

Lovejoy indicates, that derived from an analogous view of nature

as uniform or regular in its deeper operations. Enlightenment

uniformitarianism manifested itself, he claims, in the tendency

'to standardize men and their beliefs, their likings, their


53 Ibid., p. 80.

54 Priestley, Experiments, vol. 1, p. xxxix.

activities, and their institutions.'(53) We shall see below that

such an attitude can in fact easily be identified in the

egalitarian doctrines to which Burke and others were reacting in

the decade after the French Revolution. So, Burke's hostility to

the kind of social uniformitarianism described by Lovejoy is

quite clear. The connection between this uniformitarianism and

science, however, requires some elucidation.

The presence of uniformitarian assumptions in science is not

explicitly discussed by Lovejoy, but there is a stunningly good

illustration of it and the idea that Enlightenment

uniformitarianism had a basis in science in a passage by Burke's

arch-foe, Priestley. In the preface to his 1790 Experiments and

Observations on Different Kinds of Air, and Other Branches of

Natural Philosophy, connected with the Subject, Priestley

expressed a wish that those who claimed to be 'philosophers'(54)

would ... carry the same spirit into the study ofhistory, and of human nature, that they do into theirlaboratories; first assuring themselves with respect tofacts, and then explaining those facts by reducing themto general principles (which, from the uniformity ofnature, must be universally true) ... .

Another exceptionally clear instance of uniformitarianism in

science has recently been noted in a famous episode in the

history of eighteenth-century optics. This episode is worth

describing in some detail, for the terms of debate emerge very

clearly and turn out to be remarkably similar to those used by

Burke to characterize what he saw as the fundamental differences

between his own political philosophy and the uniformitarianism of

his revolutionary opponents.

The dispute began with the Swiss mathematician, Leonhard

Euler, and the British optician, John Dollond, in the middle of


55 The following summary is based on Hutchison, 'Idiosyncrasy'.

the eighteenth century.(55) The point at issue was whether it was

feasible to produce a perfect image of an object by means of

multiple lenses. Newton had shown that perfect focussing could

not be produced by passing light through a single lens, due to

the different refrangibilities of the various colours in white

light. The possibility that this chromatic aberration might be

corrected by using lens combinations was also rejected by Newton

in the Opticks, on the basis of a theorem allegedly derived from

experiment. This Newtonian position held sway until 1748 when it

was contested by Euler on the basis of some relatively simple

computations that presumed, without defence, that refractive

indices did not obey Newtons's theorem, but a logarithmic law

instead. Only later did Euler explain where his replacement law

came from. It was a simple consequence of what he called the

'Fundamental Hypothesis' - a widely endorsed presumption of

optical uniformity, according to which a pair of surfaces that

had the same effect on red light, would have to have the same

effect on all other colours.

Several years later, in 1752, Euler's formulation was

attacked by Dollond, on the grounds that it was purely

theoretical, whereas Newton's position, Dollond contended, was

empirical. Euler, however, refused to shift his ground, and

reaffirmed his stance against Newton and Dollond. Meanwhile,

arguments put forward in response to Euler by the Swedish

mathematician, Samuel Klingenstierna, persuaded Dollond to

reconsider his support of Newton (although Klingenstierna also

rejected Euler's conclusions). As a result, Dollond changed his

mind and soon managed to produce achromatic lenses. Euler

nonetheless refused to concede that chromatic aberration could be

eliminated by Dollond's methods. For Dollond's bluntly empirical

procedure produced results incompatible with Euler's fundamental


56 Gillmor, Coulomb, pp. 118-138.

57 Hutchison, 'Idiosyncrasy'.

hypothesis, so revealed in a particularly clearcut fashion that

nature was nowhere near as uniform or regular in its behaviour as

was believed, but functioned in an unacceptably variable and

idiosyncratic manner.

Euler and the vast majority of his contemporaries who shared

his uniformitarian presumptions finally had to accept the fact

that refractive indices are not distributed in a lawlike fashion.

Similar challenges to uniformitarianism in eighteenth-century

science were also present in other areas, such as research on

friction. Most eighteenth-century friction studies, Gillmor

indicates in his biography of the French physicist, Charles

Augustin Coulomb,(56) were predominantly theoretical in their

approach, with many results being based on broad extrapolations

(via some implicit presumption of regularity) from extremely

limited experimental data. Coulomb, by contrast, while not

disavowing the importance of theories, adopted a rigorously

empirical procedure in his work on friction. In an acclaimed

1781 essay on the subject, he presented his investigations

involving a wide range of variables, and showed that, in

determining friction, one had to take into account changing

factors such as the kind of materials being investigated and the

quality of their surfaces. This important methodological

innovation in quantitative studies of friction reminds one of

Dollond's individual measurement of optical media in order to

correct chromatic aberration.

Such acknowledgments of nature's complexity, Hutchison

suggests, can be seen as early instances of an outlook that is

commonly viewed as characteristic of the Romantic movement of the

late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.(57) For, despite

all the difficulties in categorizing the Romantics, it is usually


58 See, for example: Lovejoy, Chain of Being, pp. 293, et. seq.; Schenk,European Romantics, pp. 14-21; Cranston, 'Romanticism andRevolution', pp. 19-28; Butler, 'Romanticism in England', pp. 41-59;Engell, Creative Imagination, pp. 5-6. While agreeing with Lovejoyin viewing the Romantics as opposed to mechanism and the rule-boundformalism of Neoclassical aesthetics, Engell makes the importantpoint that the Romantic generation did not reject all aspects of theEnlightenment. He notes that many eighteenth-century thinkers werehighly thought of by the Romantics, and that criticism of figureslike Locke and Pope as 'symbols' of the Enlightenment was to a largedegree directed against these figures' self-styled successors.Coleridge's misrepresentation of Newton is a typical example of thisRomantic tendency to denigrate well-known thinkers when it was reallytheir followers who were resented. See Sysak, 'Coleridge'sConstruction'.

59 Hutchison, 'Idiosyncrasy' pp. 155-8.

60 Quoted in ibid., p. 158.

61 Ibid., pp. 160-1.

agreed that they significantly reject the universalizing tendency

of Enlightenment thought and emphasize in its place the

uniqueness and variety of phenomena.(58) This 'anti-

uniformitarian' attitude is conspicuous in the optical metaphors

used by representative Romantics such as Keats, Shelley and

Novalis.(59) The last, in particular, readily employed the

imagery of refraction to portray the pleasing diversity of

nature, declaring, for example, through one of the characters in

his novel Henry of Ofterdingen, that 'Nature ... is to our mind

what a body is to light. The body ... refracts it into peculiar

colours ...'.(60) Furthermore, Goethe (who is usually viewed as

closely connected with Romanticism) saw in the discovery of

achromatic lenses pleasing confirmation of his own predilection

for variety in nature. This predilection, moreover, went hand in

hand with a suspicion of theory - a suspicion that we have

already observed in Dollond's response to Euler. Goethe

(Hutchison notes) opposed the idea that nature could be explained

by a single theoretical position and wished that there were as

many perspectives in science as there were Christian creeds in

New York.(61) The scientific approach he favoured was (like

Dollond's) a fundamentally empirical one, and it was an over-


62 Sepper, 'Science of Seeing', pp. 191-3. On the importance Goetheplaced on experiment and observation in science, see also Nielsen,'Another Kind of Light', pp. 136-40.

63 Burke, Reflections, pp. 58-9.

64 Ibid., p. 59.

hasty endorsement of an inadequately tested theory (Sepper has

argued) that Goethe saw as the central problem in Newton's theory

of colours.(62)

Now exactly the same hostility to simplistic theories is a

major feature of Burke's political philosophy, where it is

similarly accompanied by a preference for finding variety and

complexity in the world. In the Reflections, Burke insisted that

revolutionary doctrines of natural rights were 'theories',

conceived without any basis in experience, whereas 'the science

of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming

it' was a 'practical' or 'experimental science, not to be taught

à priori'.(63) Burke even went on here to use an optical analogy

to illustrate his point. Natural rights, he argued, are(64)

like rays of light which pierce into a dense medium,[and] are, by the laws of nature, refracted from theirstraight line. Indeed in the gross and complicated massof human passions and concerns, the primitive rights ofmen undergo such a variety of refractions andreflections, that it becomes absurd to talk of them as ifthey continued in the simplicity of their direction. Thenature of man is intricate; the objects of society are ofthe greatest possible complexity: and therefore no simpledisposition or direction of power can be suitable eitherto man's nature, or to the quality of his affairs.

This complaint was clearly directed against the tendency that

we have seen Euler defending, a tendency to treat phenomena as if

they behaved over-uniformly, according to a simple principle or

rule. Burke objected to such uniformitarianism in politics

because he saw human nature as multi-faceted and social

institutions as the fruit of centuries of experimental adjustment

to produce harmony out of the variety of human needs and


65 Ibid., pp. 74-5.

passions. The uniformitarian natural rights theories of

Priestley and the French revolutionaries, he believed,

dangerously oversimplified the complex social realities with

which politics dealt.

That Burke saw this political uniformitarianism as connected

with uniformitarianism in science is indicated by another passage

in the Reflections where he explicitly likened the revolutionary

ideology that he was combatting to the mechanical philosophy.

For, just as the latter had reduced the apparent multiplicity of

phenomena to a single corpuscular substance - the motions of

which could be explained by a minimal number of physical laws -

the philosophy of natural rights, according to Burke, similarly

presumed that human beings were fundamentally all alike and

narrowly motivated by a single principle of self-interest to the

exclusion of many other, more noble emotions. 'On the scheme of

this barbarous philosophy,' he maintained,(65)

laws are to be supported only by ... the concern whicheach individual ... can spare to them from his ownprivate interests. ... Nothing is left which engages theaffections on the part of the [common good]. On theprinciples of this mechanic philosophy, our institutionscan never be embodied ... in persons; so as to create inus love, veneration, admiration, or attachment.

Elsewhere in the Reflections, Burke again indicated that he

saw a revolutionary political uniformitarianism as linked to a

scientific tendency to explain the diversity of phenomena in

terms of simplistic theories. He complained, for instance, about

the new legislative divisions of territory in post-revolutionary

France, claiming that that country already had suitable ways of

administering the land, based upon custom and natural boundaries.

The new departments, he alleged, had an abstract geometrical

basis, and were all of equal size and all square. He maintained

that 'this new pavement of square within square' was 'made on the


66 Ibid., pp. 169-70.

67 Ibid., p. 168.

system of Empedocles and Buffon, and not upon any politic

principle'.(66) What Burke seems to have meant by this, was that

these thinkers' accounts of nature were abstract and theoretical

rather than concrete and empirical, and that such an abstract

approach to phenomena informed the new French government's

actions. For this section of the Reflections deals specifically

with such issues. Indeed, the science of politics, Burke argued,

could not be compressed into neat, general theories. It could

only be formulated in practice, and the diversity of human

experience would require different solutions in different

circumstances.(67)

Old establishments are tried by their effects. If thepeople are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, wepresume the rest. We conclude that to be good fromwhence good is derived. In old establishments variouscorrectives have been found for their aberrations fromtheory. Indeed they are ... not often constructed afterany theory; theories are rather drawn from them.

This link between a scientific tendency to reduce the

diversity of nature to a few abstract rules and the radicals'

political uniformitarianism is emphasized by Burke throughout the

Reflections by repeated references to what he claimed was the

mathematical or geometrical character of natural rights theories.

Mathematical truths were purely abstract, he argued, and it was

misguided to treat moral and social concerns like a mathematical

problem. So, while equality was a notion that could be

demonstrated in geometry and arithmetic, he insisted that it was

ill-suited to social arrangements where class divisions, such as

those found in the ancient Roman republic, reflected a 'natural'

diversity of human abilities and circumstances. The Romans,

Burke asserted, appreciated the complexity of human societies and

'knew that their business was too arduous to be accomplished with


68 Ibid., p. 180.

69 Ibid., pp. 181, 182.

70 Ibid., pp. 46, 181-2.

71 Ibid., p. 73.

no better apparatus than ... the mathematics and arithmetic of an

exciseman.'(68) Besides, the classification of a society's

citizens made it possible, he maintained, to safeguard the

particular advantages of each class. A legislator's failure to

thus order his society was like a farmer's neglecting to classify

the different kinds of animals he owned: the farmer, Burke

claimed, would not be so naive as 'to abstract and equalize them

all into [a single class of] animals, without providing for each

kind an appropriate food, care, and employment'. Moreover, the

diversity of interests present in a hierarchical social system,

he indicated, had the advantage of preventing the concentration

of power in the hands of a tyrant.(69) The revolutionaries,

however, ignoring 'the natural order of things' and the benefits

of social inequality, were constructing their republic on the

uniformitarian principle of natural rights: 'they have attempted

to confound all sorts of citizens ... into one homogeneous mass',

Burke complained, and 'have levelled and crushed together all the

orders which they found'.(70) Burke's famous quote that 'the age

of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and

calculators has succeeded'(71) is another reference to the way in

which he saw his opponents as erroneously trying to apply

abstract, quantitative notions of equality and uniformity to what

he believed was an intrinsically hierarchical and qualitatively

diverse social order.

There is a good deal of other evidence to indicate that, in

the 1790s, a link between science and revolutionary politics was

widely perceived. For example, several years after Burke's

Reflections, in 1794, an anonymous attack was made on the


72 Quoted in Levere, 'Dr. Thomas Beddoes', pp. 192-3. The politicallymotivated hostility to Beddoes's science in this period is alsodiscussed by Golinski, Science as Public Culture, pp. 155-6, 163,165, 170-5.

73 'Review of "A Letter to the Right Hon. WILLIAM PITT, on the Means ofrelieving the present Scarcity and preventing the Diseases that arisefrom meagre Food". BY THOMAS BEDDOES, M.D.', The Watchman, March 17,1796, CC,2, p. 100. I have not seen the letter itself.

erstwhile Oxford Reader in Chemistry, Thomas Beddoes (see above,

p. 48). This attack came in the form of a pamphlet entitled The

Golden Age. A poetical epistle from Erasmus D--n, M.D. to Thomas

Beddoes, M.D. Purporting thus to be written by Priestley's and

Beddoes's friend, Erasmus Darwin, this parody of Darwin's poetic

efforts was a 'reply' to an open letter that Beddoes had

addressed to Darwin regarding a novel treatment for consumption.

In the pamphlet, Beddoes's scientific and political views were

ridiculed, as was his admiration for the social progress made in

post-revolutionary France. He was lampooned as a 'Paracelsus of

this wondrous age;/ ... the philosophic Chymist's Guide,/ The

Bigot's Scourge, of Democrats the Pride'.(72)

Two years later, an open letter of Beddoes to the prime

minister, Pitt, was enthusiastically reviewed by Coleridge.

According to this review, Beddoes had complained in his letter

that the authorities' reactionary policies were steadily

alienating the scientific community. The review further

regretted that, in the troubled 1790s, scientists with

progressive views were regarded with suspicion by those in

power:(73)

In a strain of keenest irony the Doctor notices thesingular fact, that, while the French have pressed intotheir service all the inventive powers of the chemist andmechanic, the sons of science in Britain (almost withoutan exception) are known to regard the system and measureof the Minister with contempt or abhorrence: nor does heomit to glance on the recent practice of electing Membersof the Royal Society from the colour of their politicalopinions.


74 See Montluzin, The Anti-Jacobins, pp. 21-5.

75 Anti-Jacobin, vol. 1, p. 7.

76 This poem attacked the prevailing norms of landscape gardening andcaused quite a stir. An illuminating account of the controversy canbe found in Messmann, Richard Payne Knight, pp. 59-84.

77 Anti-Jacobin, vol. 1, pp. 557, 526.

Later in the decade, the kind of satire to which Beddoes had

been subjected in 1794 had become an important weapon of the

ruling classes in their offensive against British 'Jacobins' and

the science associated with them. To assist this war against

'Jacobinism', the Anti-Jacobin, or Weekly Examiner was published

during the parliamentary session of 1797-8, under the direction

of George Canning, Pitt's Under-Secretary of State for Foreign

Affairs, and several other Tories.(74) The stated purpose of this

unofficial mouthpiece of the Pitt administration was to present a

pro-government angle on weekly events and to expose the alleged

fabrications on these by its opponents 'which may be found in the

Papers devoted to the cause of SEDITION and IRRELIGION, to the

pay or principles of FRANCE.'.(75) In addition to commentary on

political events, the paper contained a large number of satirical

poems, prominent among which were caricatures of the verse of

Erasmus Darwin and of Richard Payne Knight (1750-1824), a Whig

M.P. and well-known man of letters.

Knight had already come in for harsh criticism after the

publication of his didactic poem, The Landscape (1794), for which

he had been rightly accused of furthering radical interests.(76)

But it was his slightly later poem, The Progress of Civil Society

(1796), that the Anti-Jacobin chose to parody under the title

'The Progress of Man'. Although in his poem Knight had censured

the French Revolution, the Anti-Jacobin nonetheless considered

his views as an assault on 'Order and Government', and linked him

explicitly to Priestley, Paine, William Godwin and 'all the

French Encyclopedists'.(77) This reaction to his work was partly


78 Messman, Richard Payne Knight, p. 94. The quotation is taken fromThe Yale Edition of Horace Walpole's Correspondence, (eds.,W. S. Lewis et al. 48 vols. New Haven, 1937-83), vol. 29, pp. 334-5.

79 Cited in Messman, Richard Payne Knight, p. 93.

the result of its agnostic tone, which provoked the poet William

Mason, for example, to write to Horace Walpole, urging that

Knight's 'rash scepticism ... be exposed before the next general

election, that such honest freeholders, who detest the French

Jacobins, may be led to make it a point of conscience not to vote

for him'.(78) Mason and other 'Anti-Jacobins' were no doubt

alarmed by Knight's refusal in the opening lines of his poem to

acknowledge Providence. For Knight, divine superintendance of

nature was just one of a number of unproven cosmological

hypotheses:(79)

Whether primordial motion sprang to lifeFrom the wild of elemental strife;In central chains, the mass inert confinedAnd sublimated matter into mind?-Or, whether one great all-pervading soulMoves in each part, and animates the whole;Unnumber'd worlds to one great centre draws;And governs all by pre-establish'd laws?-Whether, in fate's eternal fetters bound,Mechanic nature goes her endless round;Or, ever varying, acts but to fulfillThe sovereign mandates of almighty will?-Let learned folly seek, or foolish pride;Rash in presumptuous ignorance, decide.

As far as the Anti-Jacobin was concerned, such epistemic

reservations were a plain indication of Knight's broader

political commitment to what was described by the pseudonymous

author of the satirical version of his poem as 'New Principles'.

These 'principles', the paper claimed, constituted a

philosophical assault on tradition. For those who embraced them

aimed to 'recover the ... nakedness of human nature, by ridding

her of the cumbrous establishments which ... our Species have

heaped upon her'. The first of these anti-traditional principles

attributed to Knight was simply that 'Whatever is, is WRONG'.


80 Priestley, Works, vol. 22, p. 8. The first edition of Priestley'sEssay was published in 1768. The second, 1771 edition, however, isthe one used here. On perfectibility, see Passmore, Perfectibilityof Man.

The second was the optimistic faith in the 'eternal and absolute

PERFECTIBILITY of MAN'. Now this belief in the unlimited

capacity of human beings to better themselves and their social

conditions is pronounced in Priestley's political and scientific

writings. In his Essay on the First Principles of Government,

and on the Nature of Political, Civil, and Religious Liberty, for

example, Priestley had declared that(80)

the human species ... is capable of ... unboundedimprovement ... a man at this time, who has beentolerably well educated, in an improved Christiancountry, is a being possessed of much greater power, tobe, and to make happy, than a person of the same age, inthe same or any other country, some centuries ago. And,for this reason ... a person some centuries hence will,at the same age, be as much superior to us.

Given the apparent innocuousness of the prospect painted here

by Priestley, it is not immediately obvious why the Anti-Jacobin

would find such views disturbing. Nowhere does it make explicit

the link between perfectibility and revolution. What was common

to both, however, was the idea that change is a good thing, and

the perfectibilist belief in the illimitable progress of human

beings and their institutions threatened a British Establishment

that was fearful of change, especially of the kind that had

recently taken place in France. Perfectibility also implied that

there were no innate inequalities between human beings: that

there were no limitations, apart from those imposed by society,

to any individual's capacity to improve him or herself. The

doctrine of perfectibility was in fact directly connected with

the views of those considered to be responsible for the French

revolution - the eighteenth-century philosophes. Of the latter,

only one was alive at the time of the Revolution and subsequently

wrote a major philosophical statement of his perfectibilist


81 Condorcet, Sketch, p. 4.

82 Priestley, State of Electricity, pp. xviii, iii.

83 Priestley, Experiments, vol. 1, pp. xxii-xxiii. Very similaropinions were expressed privately, albeit with a more humorousintention, by Josiah Wedgwood, Priestley's associate in the famousLunar Society of Birmingham. In a letter of 1766, Wedgwood wrote toa mutual friend, Thomas Bentley, 'I am much pleased with yourdisquisition upon the Capabilitys of Electricity, and should be gladto contribute ... towards rendering Doctor Priestley's very ingeniousexperiments more extensively usefull ... But what dareing mortals youare! to rob the Thunderer of his Bolts, - and for what? - no doubt toblast the oppressors of the poor and needy, or to execute some publicpiece of justice in the most tremendous and conspicuous manner, thatshall make the great ones of the Earth tremble!' Wedgwood, Selected

(continued...)

beliefs in the posthumously published Sketch for a historical

picture of the progress of the human mind (1795). This was

Condorcet, who Burke considered a particularly dangerous

revolutionary thinker. In his Sketch, Condorcet wrote that he

intended(81)

to show by appeal to reason and fact that nature has setno term to the perfection of human faculties; that theperfectibility of man is truly indefinite; and that theprogress of this perfectibility, from now onwardsindependent of any power that might wish to halt it, hasno other limit than the duration of the globe upon whichnature has cast us.

One of the central arguments of Condorcet's work was that

social progress was largely driven by scientific and

technological developments. Priestley had similarly argued in

the preface to his History and Present State of Electricity

(1767) that 'from Natural Philosophy have flowed all those great

inventions, by means of which mankind in general are able to

subsist with more ease, and in greater numbers upon the face of

the earth.' He there had also maintained that the study of

nature offered numerous examples of the inevitablity of change

and progress.(82) In the preface to his Experiments and

Observations on Different Kinds of Air (1790) Priestley went much

further in drawing the connections between scientific and

political change. There he announced threateningly that(83)


83(...continued)Letters, p. 44, cited in Kramnick, Rage of Edmund Burke, p. 18. Onthe Lunar Society, see Schofield, Lunar Society.

84 Anti-Jacobin, vol. 2, pp. 164-5. Beddoes's experimentation with themedicinal effects of gases in his Pneumatic Institution met withsimilar ridicule from the Anti-Jacobin's successor, the Anti-JacobinReview and Magazine. See Golinski, Science as Public Culture,p. 173.

85 This was the second part of Darwin's Botanic Garden. The first part,The Economy of Vegetation, was however published later in 1791.

the amazing improvements in natural knowledge which havebeen made within the last century ... will beinstrumental in bringing about other changes in the stateof the world ... This rapid progress of knowledge, which,like the progress of a wave of the sea, of sound, or oflight from the sun, extends itself ... in all directions,will ... be the means, under God, of extirpating allerror and prejudice, and of putting an end to all undueand usurped authority in the business of religion, aswell as of science; and all the efforts of the interestedfriends of corrupt establishments of all kinds, will beineffectual for their support in this enlightened age ...the English hierarchy (if there be anything unsound inits constitution) has equal reason to tremble even at anair pump, or an electrical machine.

In view of such strong sentiments about the social

consequences of science, it is not surprising to find the Anti-

Jacobin directly attacking the scientific views of proponents of

perfectibility such as Priestley. The latter's experiments with

gases, indeed, were explicitly derided for being too

perfectibilist, for aspiring to 'raise Man from his present biped

state ... to a rank in which he would be, as it were, all MIND,

would enjoy unclouded perspicacity and perpetual vitality; feed

on OXYGENE, and never DIE ... '.(84)

An explicit perfectibilist faith in social improvement is

also evident in the scientific writings of Erasmus Darwin whose

ideas The Anti-Jacobin satirized in 'The Loves of the Triangles',

a parody of Darwin's didactic poem, The Loves of the Plants

(1789).(85) But what the review indicated as most objectionable

in Darwin's writings was less the idea of human perfectibility

than its natural analogue. For, in his 1794 Zoonomia; or, The


86 Darwin, Zoonomia, pp. 498, 509.

87 Garfinkle, 'Science and Religion', p. 384.

88 'The Loves of the Triangles', Anti-Jacobin, vol. 2, pp. 171-2, 202.The idea of a nisus, the review indicated, was that of the Germannatural historian and anthropologist, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach(1752-1840), which Darwin had further developed. Interestingly, atabout this time, the young Coleridge was planning an educational tourto Germany specifically to attend lectures by Blumenbach and otherliberal-minded scholars. Shaffer has pointed out that Darwin's andColeridge's friend, Beddoes, with his wide knowledge of Germanscholarship and personal contacts in Germany, was instrumental inColeridge's decision to go there. Shaffer, 'Kubla Khan', pp. 28-30.Coleridge's trip in 1798-9 did not pass unnoticed by the watchdogs ofthe Establishment, and his ten-month absence was criticized in thenew Anti-Jacobin Magazine and Review. There, in the caption of afamous cartoon which will be discussed below, he was censured fordisloyally abandoning his country, wife and children to become a'citizen of the world'. CL,1, p. 552n.

Laws of Organic Life, Darwin had asserted, contrary to a standard

Christian tradition, that the cosmos was in fact constantly

changing and improving, and that the different forms of life had

developed 'from a single living filament'. Moreover, continuous

transformation in the natural world was probably due, he claimed,

to nature itself and not to divine intervention. He referred to

David Hume in support of his views, claiming that Hume had

similarly proposed(86)

that the world itself might have been generated, ratherthan created; that is, it might have been graduallyproduced from very small beginnings, increasing by theactivity of its inherent principles, rather than by asudden evolution of the whole by the Almighty fiat.

Shortly after the publication of Zoonomia, the conservative

British Critic complained of Darwin's disdain for Christian

revelation, and objected that humans could clearly not have souls

if they shared a common ancestry with other animals.(87)

Following the British Critic's lead, the Anti-Jacobin parodied

Darwin's idea of a progressive evolution of life from a common,

original 'filament', and ridiculed the notion that matter had an

inherent nisus or self-organizing capacity.(88) Such complaints,

however, were not just theologically driven, for we shall now see


89 Robison, Proofs of a Conspiracy, pp. 11, 41, 375. It is important tonote that Robison's target was freemasonry on the continent ratherthan in Britain. For Robison himself was a mason, and one of theaims of his book was to dissociate British freemasonry from what hejudged to be the seditious intrigues of its continental counterparts.See Montluzin, The Anti-Jacobins, pp. 16-17.

that naturalism like that of Darwin brought into question the

existing social order. Furthermore, as we have already observed,

Darwin's perfectibilist view of nature effectively supported the

idea that change of any kind was 'natural' and that inequality

was not innate.

The opinion that notions of inherently active matter were

politically dangerous was made clear in another reactionary

publication that was contemporary with the Anti-Jacobin. This

was the 1797 Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and

Governments of Europe, carried on in the Secret Meetings of Free

Masons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies by the Professor of

Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh University, John Robison (1739-

1805). This work, dedicated to the 'Secretary at War', William

Wyndham, echoed Burke's apprehensions about revolution spreading

to Britain. But it went further than Burke by insisting that an

international republican plot was being hatched in masonic lodges

around Europe. Those responsible for this conspiracy, Robison

claimed, were members of a Bavarian secret society called the

Illuminati. They were, he argued, 'the most active leaders in

the French Revolution', endorsing 'levelling principles and

cosmopolitism' and aiming 'to establish universal Liberty and

Equality, the imprescriptible Rights of Man ...'.(89) For

Robison, there was a danger that such principles had already

arrived in Britain, and the prime suspect was once again

Priestley, who, though living at a safe distance across the

ocean, supposedly still wielded considerable influence. Robison

informed his compatriots that Priestley 'has already given the

most promising specimens of his own docility in the principles of


90 Robison, Proofs of a Conspiracy, p. 482. Priestley, to the best ofmy knowledge, was not a freemason. While one of Robison's colleaguessuggested that Robison's alarmist fears were brought on by themedicinal use of opium, they were not at all out of character. SeeMorrell, 'Robison and Playfair', p. 51. Nor was such alarmismentirely dismissed by the intelligentsia. For we shall see belowthat the Edinburgh professor expressed similar views in other places,most notably in the Encylopaedia Britannica, whose willingness topublish such views indicates that they were not unacceptable to aneducated, conservative readership.

91 Robison, Proofs of a Conspiracy, pp. 482-3.

Illuminatism, and has already passed through several degrees of

initiation.'(90)

Robison, however, was not only worried about Priestley's

conspiratorial politics. What he found especially disquieting in

Priestley's 'illuminatism' was the latter's account of mind and

use of Hartley's vibrationary psychophysiology. For Robison,

Priestley's conflation of mind and matter was dangerous.

Hartley's theory, moreover, gave credence to Priestley's

position, for the doctrine of aetherial vibrations suggested that

there was a direct connection between mental phenomena and

material events - a connection which strongly implied the

materiality of mind, and thus the lack of any hierarchical

distinction between spirit and matter. Priestley, Robison warned

his countryfellows, had(91)

been preparing ... his readers for Atheism by his theoryof mind, and by his commentary on the unmeaning jargon ofDr Hartley. ... For, if intelligence and design benothing but a certain modification of the vibratiunculæor undulations of any kind, what is supreme intelligence,but a more extensive, and ... refined undulation,pervading or mixing with all others?

Robison expressed his concern several times in Proofs of a

Conspiracy about the subversive potential of theories like

Hartley's which reduced 'mental powers' and 'moral feelings' to

physiology. He complained that a 'complete freezing of the heart

would ... be the consequence of a theory which could perfectly


92 Ibid., pp. 471-2.

93 Taylor, 'Lamétherie', pp. 603-4.

94 Robison, Proofs of a Conspiracy, p. 430.

explain the affections by vibrations or crystallizations.'(92)

Robison had already noted that this idea of 'crystallizations'

was that of the French natural philosopher, Jean-Claude de

Lamétherie (1743-1817). Lamétherie believed that crystallization

was the basis for all vital activity and that life forms

originated spontaneously. He exercized some influence over

contemporary science through his editorship of the respected

scientific review, Journal de Physique.(93) Robison quipped

that(94)

Mr de la Metherie hopes, that before the enlightenedRepublic of France has got into its teens, he shall beable to tell his fellow citizens, in his Journal dePhysique, that particular form of crystallization whichmen have been accustomed to call God.

In an earlier article on 'Physics', published in the 1795

Encyclopaedia Britannica, Robison had also singled out Lamétherie

as representative of those scientists who, by claiming that mind-

like substances are the source of activity in nature, blur the

hierarchical distinction between spirit and matter. He went on

to insist that this distinction was of the utmost significance,

for there were serious 'consequences which naturally follow from

... sinking the mental faculties of man to a level with the

operations of mechanics or chemistry'. These consequences of

denying the superior, spiritual character of mind, for Robison,

were of course theological, but they were not just theological.

For they were plainly observable, he maintained, in the French

Revolution - in 'the frenzy which the reasoning pride of man has

raised in our neighbourhood, and ... should make us abandon its


95 Robison, 'Physics', p. 640. Robison's article is briefly discussedin Hughes, 'Science in English Encylopædias', p. 369.

96 Morrell, 'Robison and Playfair', pp. 49-50. See also: Dictionary ofNational Biography, vol. 7, pp. 1302-3, s.v. 'Gleig'; Montluzin, TheAnti-Jacobins, pp. 97-8.

97 Supplement, vol. 1, p. 2. The idea that activity in nature isultimately due to a spiritual cause was espoused by others, inparticular by Newton. See, for example, Home, 'Force, Electricity,and the Powers of Living Matter', pp. 116-17.

bloodstained road, and return ... to survey the works of

God ...'.(95)

Like Burke, then, Robison clearly associated the natural

philosophy of Priestley and the French scientists with

revolutionary politics. This Burkean attitude to French science

and its British counterpart continued well into the early decades

of the next century. Robison, notably, continued to convey it

through the 1803 Supplement to the Third Edition of the

Encyclopaedia Britannica. Morrell has already noted that both

Robison and the Supplement's editor and principal contributor,

George Gleig, used the scientific articles in this work to

advance their conservative political agenda.(96) The article on

'Action', referred to by Morrell, provides a good illustration of

their approach, and shows us the links they saw. This was

probably written by Gleig who claimed to be representing the

position of Thomas Reid - one of Priestley's main adversaries -

who was said to have argued that(97)

what are called the powers of nature, such as impulse,attraction, repulsion, elasticity, &c. are not, strictlyspeaking, powers or causes, but the effects of the agencyof some active and intelligent being; and that physicalcauses ... are nothing more than laws or rules, accordingto which the agent produces the effect.

In support of Reid, Gleig strongly opposed the attribution of

agency to inanimate objects, such as when a stone's falling is

assigned to the action or 'influence' of the earth, or the tides

to that of the sun and moon. Matter, according to Gleig, has no


98 Supplement, vol. 1, p. 3.

99 Ibid.

power to act on other objects, let alone on objects not in

contact. All action, he maintained, is caused by a 'distinct

agent or agents' such as God or divinely delegated agencies.

Having thus established his theologically correct credentials,

Gleig then offered some observational corroboration of his claim

that matter was inherently devoid of agency. The changing

behaviour of bodies when at different distances from one another,

he argued, meant that such variations could not be due to

supposedly unvarying properties within matter, but only to

agencies separate from it. He went on to criticize the work of

chemists, probably with Priestley and the latter's French

colleagues in mind, declaring that 'none of them can say with

certainty that he has discovered a single agent ... agents and

agency cannot be subjected to any kind of physical

experiments.'(98) For Gleig, then, the problem of agency, so

crucial to the debate surrounding materialism, was one whose

solution lay with Christian theologians, not with radical natural

philosophers. Moreover, the idea of agency, he affirmed, stemmed

from the perception of our own mental power to initiate activity;

it was not found, he implied, in the inert world of material

objects, as some French materialists had claimed. Gleig thus

entreated his readers, in a tone reminiscent of Burke and

Robison, to take stock of(99)

what dreadful consequences have in another countryresulted from that pretended philosophy which excludesthe agency of mind from the universe ... [and] to inquirewhether our consciousness and reflection do not lead usto refer real agency to mind alone.

No doubt Gleig was also thinking here of the British followers of

'that pretended philosophy'.


100 Robison, 'Physics', p. 653.


In Britain in the decade or so after 1789, then, the issue of

whether matter possessed inherent activity was not debated simply

because of its importance for physics, but because of its extra-

scientific implications. Indeed, the notion of active matter,

Robison claimed in his 1795 article on 'Physics', did not pose

any problem for science. 'Natural philosophy, it is true,' he

argued,(100)

commonly takes it for granted that matter is whollyinactive; but it is not of any moment in physics whetherthis opinion is true or false; whether matter is acted onaccording to certain laws, or whether it acts of itselfaccording to the same laws, makes no difference to thenatural philosopher.

The theological and political stakes in the question of matter's

activity, however, were perfectly plain, and not only to Robison

and his conservative colleagues. For we have seen an especially

clear statement of what was at issue in the debate over active

matter in the passage from d'Holbach discussed in the previous

chapter (pp. 59, 60).

D'Holbach's complaint that supernaturalism had been

manipulated by the ruling classes for their own ends was in fact

not a groundless one, and we find a particularly good

illustration of his point in the claims of Burke twenty years

later. For Burke vindicated the social hierarchy of his time by

invoking a divinely established order in the world. 'Each

contract of each particular state', Burke declared in a famous

passage of the Reflections,(101)

is but a clause in the great primæval contract of eternalsociety, linking the lower with the higher natures,connecting the visible and invisible world, according toa fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath whichholds all physical and all moral natures, each in theirappointed place.


102 Hutchison has suggested that the supernaturalism of the mechanicalphilosophy of the seventeenth century in fact lent support to the newabsolutist politics of that period. See Hutchison, 'ReformationPolitics', pp. 10-12. Cf. Shapin, 'Of Gods and Kings', pp. 196-9,210-12.

103 Robison, 'Physics', pp. 640, 659.

Now if science were to show that nature could function quite well

without a hypothetical realm of spirit, Burke's position would

prove to be indefensible, and it would be much harder to

alternatively defend the view that 'all physical and moral

natures' should maintain 'their appointed place'. It was thus in

the interests of those who wished to preserve the existing social

hierarchy to retain a distinct ontological role for spirit in

nature, as had for example existed in much seventeenth-century

mechanical philosophy.(102)

It was this task of upholding a hierarchical dualism in

natural philosophy that Robison had taken upon himself, and one

of the principal messages of his article on 'Physics' was that

'the mechanical philosophy now in vogue' was an aberration of the

legitimate mechanical philosophy to which he himself subscribed.

Moreover, the latter, he claimed, was entirely compatible with

the aspirations of the governing elite - for good science is

politically neutral. 'The truths ... which the naturalist

discovers', Robison maintained toward the end of his article,

'are such as do not in general affect the passions of men'. One

could then rest assured, he concluded, that 'those whose interest

is to keep men in political or religious ignorance, cannot easily

suspect bad consequences from improvements in this science'.(103)

For Robison to thus insist on the political neutrality of his

own natural philosophy clearly indicates that in the 1790s

science was not an apolitical enterprise. Indeed, we have

observed that the attacks in this period on the natural

philosophies of Priestley, Darwin and others had a definite

political motivation. For those defending the existing social


104 While my account here covers ground already covered by others, I aimto emphasize the independence of Coleridge's politics throughout the1790s and some fundamental continuities between his early radicalismand subsequent conservatism. His position after 1800 was, insignificant ways, consistent with that of the mid-1790s. Inparticular, it was informed by a similar insistence on the importanceof religious values in politics. Some important secondary sources onColeridge's political 'apostasy' are: David Erdman's introduction toColeridge's journalistic essays in the Morning Post and Courier,CC,3, vol. 1, pp. lix-cxiii; Thompson, 'Disenchantment or Default';Miller, Ideology and Enlightenment, pp. 8-27, 89-121.

105 In 'Religious Musings', Coleridge had described Priestley as'patriot, and saint, and sage'. 'Religious Musings', l. 371, PW,1,p. 123.

order, then, 'Jacobin science' unquestionably sustained 'Jacobin'

politics.

II.4 Coleridge's Change of Heart(104)

Coleridge's professed admiration in the 1790s for the circle

of 'Jacobin' scientists who were being universally condemned by

the Establishment and his public expression of similar radical

views naturally brought him under suspicion. The Anti-Jacobin

considered him to be influential enough for it to include some

obvious references to him and his work in its final issue. This

issue contained a poem entitled 'New Morality' which singled out

Coleridge, Southey, Priestley, Godwin, Thelwall, and Paine as

national enemies. It incorporated a menacing parody of

Coleridge's tribute to Priestley in 'Religious Musings':

'PRIESTLEY's a Saint, and STONE a Patriot still'.(105) It also

took to task liberal papers such as the Morning Chronicle and the

Morning Post, in which Coleridge had published some of his

radical poetry. These were accused of treacherously embracing

the 'Rights of Man' ideology of the French revolutionaries.

'Thou Morning Chronicle, and Morning Post,' ... ye make the

Rights of Man your theme,/ Your Country libel, and your God


106 Anti-Jacobin, vol. 2, pp. 630, 635-6. As The Anti-Jacobin wasdesigned as an antidote to these papers' anti-ministerial position,it lost no opportunity in disparaging them. For instance, acharacteristic entry in the index of the edition of The Anti-Jacobinused here read: 'Morning Chronicle - its impiety - its blasphemy -its falsehood - its historical, geographical and political ignorance- its insolence - baseness - and stupidity. Passim, passim.'

107 See figure on opposite page, reproduced from Hill, Gillray, plate 74.

108 Hill, Gillray, p. 71.

blaspheme'.(106) In an illustration of the 'New Morality' by the

famous cartoonist James Gillray,(107) published soon afterwards in

the successor to The Anti-Jacobin, the monthly Anti-Jacobin

Magazine and Review, the liberal papers' titles were prominent,

as were clear caricatures of the government's opponents. Also

noticeable were altered titles of publications that the

authorities deemed subversive, such as Mary Wollstonecraft's

'Wrongs of Women' (A Vindication of the Rights of Women) and

Darwin's 'Zoonomia or Jacobin Plants' (Zoonomia; or, The Laws of

Organic Life). In conformity with The Anti-Jacobin's poem, the

figures in Gillray's cartoon were portrayed as paying tribute to

one of the newly-elected French Directors, Louis-Marie de

Larevellière-Lépaux.(108) Conspicuous in this reverent company

were the Whig leader, Charles James Fox, Thelwall, Coleridge and

Southey. The last two were depicted as orating asses, a

satirical touch which alluded to a 1794 poem of Coleridge's,

published in the Morning Chronicle, entitled 'Address to a Young

Jack-Ass and its Tether'd mother'. In the poem, Coleridge had

expressed his wish that the tethered ass, his 'Brother', - a

symbol of those oppressed by the government's harsh wartime

economic policies - could soon join him 'in the Dell/ Of high-

soul'd Pantisocracy to dwell'. At the end of a 1796 version of

the poem, the poet provokingly challenged the Establishment by

contrasting the joyful braying of the ass in a pantisocratic


109 The lines cited here from the Morning Chronicle's versions ofColeridge's poem can be found in PW,1, pp. 75-6.

110 On the British government's persecution of radicals in the 1790s,see: Goodwin, Friends of Liberty, pp. 271-4, 287-92, 305-6, 313-14,318-25, 332-58, 387-406, 413-15, 451-61, 485-8; Thompson,'Disenchantment or Default', pp. 155-68; Roe, Radical Years,chapter 7.

111 Everest, Coleridge's Secret Ministry, pp. 128-9. A 1797 letter ofColeridge testifies to the problems that Thelwall was encountering.The radical leader, he explained in this letter, 'by his particularexertions in the propagation of those principles, which we holdsacred & of the highest importance, ... has become, as you well know,particularly unpopular, thro' every part of the Kingdom'. CL,1,p. 342: to John Chubb, 20 August 1797.

112 CL,1, p. 343: to John Thelwall, 21 August 1797.

Utopia with 'warbled melodies that soothe to rest/ The tumult of

some SCOUNDREL Monarch's breast.'(109)

By the time of The Anti-Jacobin's attack on Coleridge, the

repressive measures of the Pitt government had succeeded in

effectively stifling popular political opposition in Britain.(110)

Thelwall, for instance, had found it expedient to retire from

politics to the Welsh countryside where he nonetheless continued

to be persecuted.(111) In 1797, he had even hoped to join

Coleridge and Wordsworth, living the secluded life of poets in

rural Somerset, but was warned against doing so by Coleridge who

claimed that 'even riots & dangerous riots might be the

consequence'.(112) Later, in the Biographia Literaria (1817),

Coleridge related an episode from this time which may explain his

concern about Thelwall's permanently joining him and Wordsworth;

an episode which also illustrates the British government's

widespread use of spies and informers in the mid-1790s.

Coleridge recounted how, at Nether Stowey in 1797, the poets had

been shadowed by a spy who, on overhearing them talk about one

'Spy Nozy', feared that he and his prominent nose had been

detected. This story, with its amusing pun on 'Spinoza', may

well have been made up by Coleridge. But there was a spy in

Nether Stowey at this time, hot on the trail of the two poets


113 CC,7, vol. 1, pp. 193-7; Roe, 'Who was Spy Nozy?'; idem, RadicalYears, pp. 248-62.

114 See Roe, Radical Years, pp. 234-8.

after the Home Office had received local reports about their

suspicious note-taking and queries regarding the navigability of

the local river down to the sea. In the Biographia, Coleridge

indicated that he had merely been preparing notes for a poem, to

be entitled 'The Brook'. But, as a French invasion party had

recently landed on the Welsh coast, the locals and Home Office

were understandably worried about the poets' activities. The

spy, however, was more interested to learn that Thelwall had very

recently visited Stowey.(113)

By 1798, the tone of Coleridge's political statements had

become more moderate than at the time of his Pantisocratic

aspirations several years earlier, a fact which can partly be

explained by the repressive political climate in Britain.(114)

Nevertheless, he was still openly critical of the government,

accusing it of callously turning a blind eye to the suffering it

was causing through its war against France and through its

subservience to the powerful interests of the slave trade. For

example, a poem, 'Fire, Famine, and Slaughter; a War Eclogue',

published in early 1798 in the Morning Post, was a direct attack

on Pitt's policies towards France and Ireland. The poem was set

in the war-stricken Vendée region in France where the three

personifications of its title were depicted as running rampage at

Pitt's behest. Although the French government was in fact

directly responsible for the carnage and privation alluded to in

the poem, Coleridge held the British administration indirectly

accountable because of its intransigent hostility to the young

republic. The accusation that Britain had exacerbated France's

domestic politics by overreacting to the Revolution echoed

Coleridge's 1795 pamphlet, Conciones ad Populum. There he had

accused Britain not only of bringing misery to France, but also


115 CC,1, p. 58; 'Ode to the Departing Year', ll. 94-6, PW,1, p. 165n.

116 CC,7, vol. 1, p. 200.

of causing suffering in Africa, India and America: 'the four

Quarters of the Globe groan beneath the intolerable iniquity of

this nation.' This comment was reprinted in a note to a later

political poem, 'Ode to the Departing Year' (1796) where he again

condemned Britain's indifference to war-time suffering and the

horrors of the slave trade. In a 1797 version of this poem, he

bitterly complained, 'For ever shall the bloody island scowl?/

For ever shall her vast and iron bow/ Shoot Famine's evil arrows

o'er the world ...?'(115)

In February, 1798, however, the French invaded Switzerland,

provoking protest from even those like Coleridge who had

continued to view France optimistically as the only place in

Europe where a new, progressive regime would soon develop. He

almost immediately composed 'France: an Ode', a 'palinodia' or

recantation (as he later put it) of his previous support for the

French Revolution.(116) Indeed, this poem expressed his regret

for having ever thought that France would provide a political

example which the rest of Europe should follow. It also gave an

account of the attitudes of those in Britain who, believing that

domestic strife was probably a necessary stage in the evolution

of the new state, had supported the republic through its internal

political vicissitudes. French territorial ambitions, however,

had finally disabused the country's defenders abroad. Coleridge

sharply rebuked France for its betrayal of liberal principles:

'Are these thy boasts, Champion of human kind?/ To mix with Kings

in the low lust of sway'. Yet, despite the young poet's

disenchantment with French liberty, he still did not see Britain

as offering a credible alternative, and the poem was as scathing


117 'France: an Ode', ll. 80-1, and note to ll. 85-9, PW,1, pp. 246-7.

118 From unsigned notice in English Review, August 1796, xxviii, 172-5,in Jackson, ed., Critical Heritage, vol. 2, p. 229.

119 'France: an Ode', ll. 95-6, PW,1, p. 247.

of the Pitt administration's complicity in the slave trade as it

was of France's ideological perfidy.(117)

It was not surprising, then, that The Anti-Jacobin in 1798

included Coleridge, along with Priestley and Darwin, in its

inventory of seditious persons. The young radical, however, did

not entirely merit this animosity. For, as we have observed, he

publicly shared the Establishment's professed concern about an

atheistic tendency in left-wing circles. But Coleridge's open

advocacy of the views of Priestley and Beddoes, together with the

Pantisocratic ideology expressed in his Bristol lectures and The

Watchman, would have made it difficult not to identify him with

other, extreme radical interests. A 1796 review of his poems,

for example, concluded with the remark 'that Mr. Coleridge is the

most violent leveller we have met with, even in this age of

levelling. Instead of an equal division of property, our poet

spurns at all property'.(118) Coleridge's independent position

within the revolutionary camp, therefore, was clearly not

recognized by the Establishment which, moreover, had to bear the

brunt of his criticism. The median position he was trying to

steer between the extremes of atheistic radicalism and state and

church corruption would also have been viewed as suspiciously

ambiguous in the polarized political climate of the 1790s.

Coleridge's distinct political stance was still noticeable in

his 1798 political poems. In 'France: an Ode', for instance, he

portrayed liberty as equally removed 'from Priestcraft's harpy

minions' as from 'factious Blasphemy's obscener slaves'.(119)

'Priestcraft' here was an obvious reference to the Anglican

Establishment, and 'Blasphemy' to the infidel radicals. In


120 'Fears in Solitude', ll. 162-3, 140-3, 152-3, 172-5, PW,1, pp. 260-2.Interestingly, Coleridge continued to see Providence as interveningin human history, though France came to replace Britain as the targetof divine retribution. See, for example, CL,2, p. 763: to LordLiverpool, 28 July 1817.

'Fears in Solitude; written in April 1798, during the Alarm of an

Invasion', the poet again distanced himself from the two extremes

of British politics, although he was now clearly less fervent

than he had previously been about constitutional reform. For

instance, Coleridge here rebuked those in Britain who sought 'All

change from change of constituted power;/ As if a Government had

been a robe'. This more moderate position on reform was largely

due to his revised attitude toward the French who, ironically,

were described in the poem in very similar terms to those which

the poet had earlier used to characterize his British adversaries

in Joan of Arc. Just as Joan's enemies had been admonished for

giving value to the 'gross and visible sphere' at the expense of

the spiritual, the French were now depicted as 'Impious and

false, a light yet cruel race,/ Who laugh away all virtue ... and

still promising/ Freedom [are] themselves too sensual to be

free'. Nevertheless, in the poem Coleridge again put much of the

blame for France's aggression on British policy, urging his

countryfellows in a prophetic vein, to 'repent ... of the wrongs

with which we stung/ So fierce a foe to frenzy'. He in fact

argued that Britain's current economic and political distress was

due to the nation's deep-seated moral corruption, for which a

French invasion would be the celestial recompense. To reinforce

this apocalyptic message, the poem offered a provoking picture of

the British reactionaries who 'Dote with a mad idolatry; and all/

Who will not fall before their images,/ And yield them worship,

they are enemies/ Even of their country!' At the end of this

line, the poet sadly noted, 'Such have I been deemed.'(120)

The conciliatory route that Coleridge thought he was

proposing between the Scylla of revolution and the Charybdis of


121 From: unsigned review, Monthly Mirror, January 1799, vii, 36-7;unsigned review, British Critic, June 1799, xiii, 662-3; unsignedreview, Critical Review, August 1799, xxvi, 472-5, in Jackson, ed.,Critical Heritage: vol. 2, pp. 237-8; vol. 1, p. 48;, vol. 1, p. 49.

122 CL,1, p. 527: to William Wordsworth, circa 10 September 1799.

reaction, then, predictably met with an unappreciative reception

from the British Establishment. The conservative Monthly Mirror

remarked, in response to the publication of the quarto pamphlet

which included 'Fears in Solitude' and 'France: an Ode', that

Coleridge was 'no friend to the present system of government',

and complained that his warnings of providential justice to be

inflicted on Britain were 'not highly honourable to his feelings

as a Briton, nor very complimentary to the national character.'

The British Critic, which we observed above to be hostile to

Erasmus Darwin, similarly lamented Coleridge's 'absurd and

preposterous prejudices against his country'. Yet, Coleridge's

new position also began to draw a negative response from the

supporters of reform who had viewed his earlier political career

as indicative of his solidarity with their cause. The liberal

Critical Review, for instance, regretfully noted that 'Mr.

Coleridge has become an alarmist'. It claimed, however, that his

latest poems indicated he was still on the opposition's side.(121)

Indeed, despite his changed attitude toward France, Coleridge

did not abandon the reformist principles of his Bristol days. In

a 1799 letter to Wordsworth, for example, he expressed his wish

that the latter(122)

would write a poem, in blank verse, addressed to those,who, in consequence of the complete failure of the FrenchRevolution, have thrown up all hopes of the ameliorationof mankind, and are sinking into an almost epicureanselfishness, disguising the same under the soft titles ofdomestic attachment and contempt for visionaryphilosophes.

This statement, directed at former radicals who had abandoned the

revolutionary cause, shows that Coleridge still held to a broad


123 'Review of a pamphlet by Arthur Young, Esq. F.R.S. and Secretary tothe Board of Agriculture, entitled, "The Question of Scarcity Plainlystated, &c."', Morning Post, 27 March 1800, CC,3, vol. 1, p. 238.

vision of cosmopolitan emancipation from the fetters of tyranny

and inequality. Such Utopian sentiments clearly went against the

grain of the nationalistic, anti-gallican rhetoric of the Pitt

administration, which Coleridge, as journalist, continued to

attack. For instance, in a review in the Morning Post of a

pamphlet by Arthur Young, a well-known writer on travel and

agricultural matters, Coleridge criticized the writer's

recantation of reformist opinions, and eloquently argued,(123)

We have, alas! too often mistaken newspaper anecdotes ofrogues in Paris for the annals of the French nation sincethe revolution; and in our rage against a phantom ofJacobinism, have shamefuly neglected to calculate theblessings from the destruction of Feudalism. The vine ofliberty shall not be blasphemed by us, because the Noahs ofthe revolutionary deluge, who first planted it, were madedrunk by its untried fruits.

In 1800, then, Coleridge obviously still believed in the

liberal ideals in the name of which the Ancien Régime had been

overthrown. But he was going to find it more and more difficult

to defend them in the face of rising patriotism at home and the

glaring discrepancy between these ideals and the new Napoleonic

rule in France. Thus, two years later, he could no longer find

anything to praise in France's conduct. In a series of articles

published in the Morning Post in the latter part of 1802, his

political position, along with that of the newspaper, had changed

dramatically. In direct contrast to his above condemnation of

feudalism, he now advocated the restoration of the Bourbon

monarchy in France and claimed to have always supported a

patrician form of government. Napoleon's opposition to inherited

power, he maintained, was opposed to 'the habit of [Coleridge's

own] mind to think with great respect of feudal institutions in

general, and with an especial admiration of ... hereditary

succession.' With Napoleon still in view, he went on to argue


124 From 'Affairs of France', Morning Post, 9 October 1802, CC,3, vol. 3,pp. 353-4.

125 'Once a Jacobin Always a Jacobin', Morning Post, 21 October 1802,CC,3, vol. 1, pp. 367-70.

126 Ibid., pp. 372-3.

that a landed aristocracy was a healthy 'check on the power of

the Crown'.(124)

Coleridge's new political stance was particularly evident in

another article from this time, entitled 'Once a Jacobin Always a

Jacobin'. Here, he began by decrying the administration's

harassment of those who, like him, had earlier expressed support

for the French Revolution and had opposed the British

administration's bellicosity toward France. He continued,

however, by arguing that the term 'Jacobin' in such cases was

misapplied, and he professed himself to be as stalwart in his

antagonism to true Jacobinism as his government. Real Jacobins,

he claimed, believed in 'absolute revolutions' and equal,

'universal suffrage': 'Whoever builds a Government on personal

and natural rights, is ... a Jacobin. Whoever builds on social

rights, that is, hereditary rank, property, and long

prescription, is an Anti-Jacobin'.(125) The former radical now

plainly saw himself in the latter camp. The message of this

article, then, was strangely ambiguous. On the one hand, the

authorities' heavy-handed treatment of the political opposition

was censured. Yet, as the title indicated, Coleridge was anxious

to be seen as a reformed character who shared the politically

conservative interests of his government, and even those of the

derisive Anti-Jacobin newspaper. This identification with the

Establishment was extreme, for here he also maintained that he

had never embraced the revolutionary, egalitarian 'system of

French politics'.(126)

As far back as our memory reaches, it was an axiom inpolitics with us, that in every country in which propertyprevailed, property must be the grand basis of the


127 See: CC,3, vol. 1, pp. lxx-lxxi, civ; Miller, Ideology andEnlightenment, pp. 106-7.

128 See Thompson, English Working Class, pp. 494-5.

government; and that that government was the best, in whichthe power was the most exactly proportioned to the property.

Such an apparent repudiation of Coleridge's former political

principles demands an explanation. Financial opportunism might

have been a motive, for the Morning Post, which was to some

extent providing his bread and butter, was concerned about how to

attract a larger readership in an increasingly nationalistic

climate of opinion. Coleridge was in fact quite influential in

determining the paper's new political direction, so it is

certainly possible that he pushed a change of partisanship for

reasons of personal expediency.(127)

Yet, there were clearly other reasons for Coleridge's change

of heart, not the least being the dismay that he, like many

others, must have felt toward the outcome of Jacobinism in

France.(128) The young Coleridge had invested his political hopes

in the French republic, and had continued to defend the latter

against British, 'anti-Jacobin' invective. But Napoleon had

quashed any remaining illusions that France might have retained

at least some of its revolutionary idealism. It was probably no

accident that Coleridge's conservatism emerged full-blooded in

1802 - the year Napoleon assumed the First Consulship for life.

For Napoleon's action clearly signalled the end of the French

republican experiment, comparable, Coleridge argued in an article

of that year, to the demise of the Roman republic under the rule

of Julius, Augustus, and Tiberius Caesar. Coleridge's feeling

that he and others had been personally betrayed by Napoleon was

ruefully noted: 'We are not conscious of any feelings of

bitterness towards the First Consul; or, if any, only that venial

prejudice, which naturally results from the having hoped proudly


129 'Comparison of the Present State of France with that of Rome underJulius and Augustus Caesar. I', Morning Post, 21 September 1802,CC,3, vol. 1, pp. 312-20. The quotation is on p. 319.

130 Cf. Miller, Ideology and Enlightenment, pp. 119-21.

131 CC,1, pp. 223-6. See also Coleridge's 'Lecture on the Slave-Trade',delivered in Bristol just shortly after the last of his lectures onrevealed religion. Ibid., pp. 235-51.

of any individual, and the having been miserably

disappointed.'(129)

Nevertheless, it is also important to bear in mind that there

was an important continuity between Coleridge's new political

position and some fundamental aspects of his earlier

thinking.(130) For example, in his Bristol lectures he had

demonstrated an evident antagonism to the commercially driven,

inhumane conduct of the British government, particularly in

connection with the slave trade.(131) Notwithstanding his

recommendation to abolish private property at that time,

Coleridge's Pantisocratic antipathy to commerce was, to some

extent, in keeping with his new defence of the anti-commercial,

landed interest. We shall in fact see in the following chapter

that one of the central characteristics of his post-1800 politics

was a hostility to what he saw as the increasing ascendancy of a

'commercial spirit' in British society. By siding with the

Establishment, then, he can effectively be understood as seeking

an ally in his continuing rejection of this commercial morality.

Also anticipating Coleridge's new conservative position was

the earlier paternalistic élitism that we have noted. His anti-

democratic sentiments can already be discerned in his attitude to

the politics sustained by the 'modern sages' in the mid-1790s.

For he then held that his own reformist perspective was distinct

from the ultra-democratic tendencies of some of his comrades-in-

arms. Coleridge's opposition to the latter's atheistic

radicalism, as we have seen, was due not only to their

irreligion, but more importantly to their political influence on


132 'Comparison of the Present State of France with that of Rome underJulius and Augustus Caesar. II', Morning Post, 25 September 1802,CC,3, vol. 1, p. 324.

the working classes. He saw such influence as dangerous, for the

uneducated could be easily manipulated, as was evident from the

French Terror and the mob action against Priestley in Birmingham.

Moreover, a society in which political power lay in the hands of

demagogues and their followers was clearly not the kind in which

Coleridge could ever foresee himself and his peers playing a

part.

That the anti-democratic leanings in his earlier thought

should come to be emphasized at the expense of its

communitarianism can thus be viewed as a function of his

increased concern about the consequences of working-class

agitation. Napoleon's bellicose ambitions must have exacerbated

Coleridge's fear that domestic instability could provide an

opportunity for atheistic demagogues to come to power and lead

the country along a path similar to that taken in France. In the

event, the established political order might well have seemed to

Coleridge to be the only sure defence against the irreligious,

democratic tendencies of the period.

One revealing new feature of this alliance with the landed

classes was an antagonism that Coleridge began to adopt to

everything French - an antagonism already apparent in Burke and

other 'Anti-Jacobins' of the 1790s. Thus, an article of 1802

began the first of many denunciations of French science,

literature and politics as interrelated components of a single,

all-embracing 'mock philosophy'.(132) This hostility was to

become ever more pronounced in his writings, and, like his new

political allies, he was to gradually come to view the 'Jacobin

science' that they had censured as a serious threat to the

aristocratic polity he now defended. It is important to note

here that Coleridge's new scientific position was a result of his


changing politics. He did not change his politics because of his

science. Thus, following the lead of Establishment apologists,

even Hartley and Priestley were to meet with stern reproof from

their former disciple. Coleridge's attack on 'Jacobin science',

however, occupied a much more central position in his politics

than it had done in those of Burke, Robison, or The Anti-Jacobin.

He took pains to demonstrate that the connections between natural

and social philosophies that his political predecessors seemed to

take for granted could in fact be clearly articulated and traced

historically. Reflecting his critique of the 'modern sages' in

his Bristol lectures, Coleridge continued to argue that natural

philosopy was not a politically neutral enterprise, just as it

was not detached from theological considerations. So, over the

next thirty years, much of his intellectual effort was devoted to

spelling out the social implications of what he took to be the

prevailing 'Jacobin science' of the time. Increasingly, he

referred to this science by what he saw as its predominant

attribute: 'mechanism'. The 'mechanical philosophy' of the early

nineteenth century, Coleridge came to insist, had a political

agenda that many failed to notice, and so required unmasking.

p.130

1 Chambers, Cyclopaedia, vol. 2, s.v. 'Newtonian Philosophy'.

2 Southey, Joan of Arc, p. 42.

CHAPTER III: 'COMMERCIAL G. BRITAIN'—

COLERIDGE'S OBJECTIONS TO THE MECHANICAL PHILOSOPHY

III.1 Introduction

The mechanical philosophy of the eighteenth century was

perceived by many as little different to its original,

seventeenth-century version. The fact that Newton had made a big

change to that philosophy in adding forces to its physics was

often overlooked, as was the fact that Newton's eighteenth-

century successors had also modified Newton. Thus, the fifth

edition of Chambers' Cyclopaedia (1741-43), described what was

obviously eighteenth-century 'Newtonian Philosophy' as

'mechanical',(1) and Coleridge similarly referred to Newtonian

philosophy, in his 1795 footnote to Southey's Joan of Arc, as

'the mechanic philosophy'.(2)

In the preceding chapter, in our discussion of that footnote,

we saw that what the young Coleridge specifically objected to in

eighteenth-century Newtonianism was a materialistic tendency that

he found within it. We also noted that while he complained about

some technical failings of this philosophy, by reiterating

criticisms made by Andrew Baxter about the Newtonian aether, the

technicalities of the aether were not Coleridge's, or Baxter's,

real concern. Both were more worried about the theological

implications of Newton's concept. For if the aether possessed

inherent activity (as the Queries to the Opticks appeared to

suggest) divine agency was not required to explain matter's

Ch.III: 'Commercial G. Britain' p.131

3 Ibid.

4 See: Gascoigne, 'Bentley to the Victorians', pp. 219-27, 231, 234-8;Yeo, 'Genius, Method, and Morality', pp. 271-3. For valuablediscussion of the ideological dimension of Newtonian science in thelate seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, see also Stewart,Rise of Public Science, passim.

motion. Newton's God, Coleridge observed, seemed to be

'dethroned by Vice-regent second causes'.(3)

Yet it was not just the theological implications of

eighteenth-century Newtonianism that bothered Coleridge. For we

have seen that the immaterialistic position he was advocating in

Southey's poem underpinned the spiritual politics (embraced in

the poem by Joan herself) that he then was championing: a

politics opposed to both the religious hypocrisy of a reactionary

Establishment and the atheistic politics of leading radicals.

The 'mechanic philosophy' he was attacking, then, was one that he

saw as sustaining unsatisfactory political positions.

This perception - that Newtonianism was connected with

politics - was not unusual in eighteenth-century Britain.

Newton's natural philosophy, for example, played an important

apologetic role on behalf of the British Establishment throughout

the century. That this role was not only religious, but

political as well, is plain from the fact that, in both the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Newton's name was often

invoked to promote religious, political and moral orthodoxy.(4)

At the end of the eighteenth century, however, this conservative

use of Newtonianism was subverted by Newton's enlistment into

natural philosophies that threatened the ruling elite. Newton

now became linked to opponents of the religious and political

Establishments. In particular, to scientific figures who

publicly supported the French revolution. Indeed, John Robison

was quite adamant that Newton's name was being tarnished by its

association with the radical 'Jacobin science' discussed in the

previous chapter, and endeavoured to reclaim the great scientist


5 Robison, Proofs of a Conspiracy, pp. 483-4. The phrase replacedbetween square brackets was 'threw out', which might easily conveythe opposite of Robison's meaning here. Robison was of coursethinking of the politically subversive views of self-proclaimedNewtonians like Hartley and Priestley, but he also had in mind otherswho claimed a Newtonian pedigree, such as the Marquis de Laplace.The Frenchman's astronomical treatises, Robison complained,exemplified a very different attitude to that found in the GeneralScholium of Newton's Principia. Whereas Newton's work encouragedreflection on God's providential solicitude for humanity, Laplace'ssystem, Robison maintained, led us to consider our insignificance ina fortuitous universe. Ibid., pp. 230-3. The political consequencesof such an alarming idea, Robison maintained, had been made clear byevents across the Channel.

6 See Gascoigne, 'Bentley to the Victorians', pp. 235-8.

for those in power. But he realized this was no easy task, for

(as we have seen) Newton himself had made his views susceptible

to a materialistic interpretation, by positing the aether.

Robison glumly observed that Newton 'would surely recollect with

regret that unhappy hour, when ... he first [suggested] his whim

of a vibrating aether', for it had 'paved the way for much of the

atomical philosophy of the moderns.'(5)

While, from the early 1800s, an increasingly conservative

Coleridge began to follow Robison and others in condemning

'Jacobin science', it was not out of a shared concern to preserve

the apologetic role of Newtonianism for the ruling classes.

Indeed, Coleridge unequivocally portrayed Newton as an ally of

the Jacobin scientists. Thus, while the nineteenth-century

British Establishment continued to use Newton's name to uphold

religious and political orthodoxy,(6) Coleridge began to blame

Newton for social and political evils that he claimed had been

encouraged by the scientist's 'mechanic philosophy'.

In the present chapter, we shall see that what Coleridge

repeatedly condemned as most dangerous in this philosophy was its

attached sensationalist epistemology. The high value

Newtonianism placed on knowledge derived from the senses, he

complained, not only undermined the belief in an imperceptible,

spiritual reality, but more importantly, lent credibility to a


secular morality, one based on the sense of pleasure, and such

'Epicureanism' had undesirable social and political consequences.

In particular (he protested) this self-focussed morality

bolstered a new 'commercial' social order in which a mercenary

individualism was rapidly replacing a regard for the common good

claimed by both traditionalists and egalitarians. It was

imperative, then, to refute the epistemological foundations given

this morality by mechanistic science.

Coleridge undertook this in various ways. From a very early

period, he attacked the reductionistic methodology of

sensationalism, and defended innate ideas against a Lockean

position that all our knowledge is obtained via the senses.

Curiously, we shall also discover that, in keeping with this

defence of innatism, he increasingly advocated a Platonic theory

of knowledge that underpinned a hierarchical, aristocratic view

of society.

His attack on the sensationalist epistemology promoted by

Newtonianism later led him to insist on a distinction, derived

from Kant, between mental faculties of 'Reason' and

'Understanding'. A clear idea of this distinction was vital,

Coleridge claimed, for these faculties' legitimate

epistemological functions had been distorted within the

'Epicurean' framework of the mechanical philosophy, and this

distortion also sustained individualistic ideologies.

We shall also see that another major objection levelled at

Newtonianism by the mature Coleridge was that it led to a vastly

over-simplified model of nature, one which was then misapplied to

social phenomena to argue that states should be viewed on the

analogy of a machine. This was similar to Burke's complaint

noted above (pp. 92-96) that a uniformitarian, scientific

approach to nature had been misappropriated by eighteenth-century

natural rights theorists. We shall observe that Coleridge


followed Burke in drawing a connection between the mechanical

philosophy and natural rights, but went much further. For he

argued that it was not just the quantitative, abstract approach

of mechanistic science, but some of its most fundamental

concepts, that sustained liberal social philosophies. Thus,

Locke's individualistic 'natural rights', Coleridge asserted,

owed their origin to an 'atomistic' conception of matter.

Similar conceptual misappropriation could also be detected (he

argued) in the laissez-faire doctrines of the late eighteenth and

early nineteenth centuries, which portrayed the economy as

functioning like a self-regulating machine. Such a mechanistic

model of society, he protested, not only debased human beings,

but dangerously implied - in support of revolutionary change -

that states were mere artifices that might occasionally need to

be taken apart and reconstituted in order to function better. In

Chapter V, we shall see that this model was opposed to the mature

Coleridge's own view, derived from Burke, that human societies

were analogous to living organisms, which had an intrinsic unity

while developing 'naturally' and gradually over time.

For Coleridge, then, a mechanistic natural philosopy

threatened in a variety of ways the traditional social order,

which, from the early 1800s, he was coming to defend. Yet, we

shall find that his criticism of the mechanical philosophy and

its political implications was remarkably consistent with some of

the views he had expressed earlier, as a 'radical' in the mid-

1790s. Concern about the rising influence of political

demagogues, for instance, was a major motive for his hostility to

this philosophy in both periods. But, while previously he had

directly attacked the radicals' anti-hierarchical science, he now

saw the main threat as coming from the increasingly powerful

mercantile classes. By their endorsement of Newtonianism for

their own political ends, they were unwittingly abetting the

revolutionary cause.


7 Southey, Joan of Arc, p. 42.

III.2 Reductionistic Sensationalism

From the time of his attacks on the 'mechanic philosophy' in

Joan of Arc, Coleridge explicitly linked mechanism with a Lockean

epistemology, in which credibility was restricted to knowledge

derived from the senses - with the sense of sight especially

privileged. Such a sensationalist epistemology, he believed,

involved an implicit rejection of immaterial causation, for it

effectively insisted that all causes in science must be deducible

from observation. Coleridge was opposed to such an attitude.

So, in the concluding paragraph of his footnote in Joan of Arc,

he defended the reality of fundamental causes that lay outside

the scope of the senses against those who refused to acknowledge

that 'invisible things are not the objects of vision'. He went

on to complain here that 'philosophical systems ... are received

not for their Truth, but in proportion as they attribute to

Causes a susceptibility of being seen, whenever our visual organs

shall have become sufficiently powerful.'(7) Because sensation

was widely seen as the source of knowledge, materialistic

theories like those using Newton's aether were often deemed more

credible than theories that did not employ a material source of

motion.

More evidence of Coleridge's early hostility to a

sensationalist approach to knowledge is found in a 1797 letter to

his friend, Thomas Poole, though here he expressed a different

objection, importantly, to that found in Joan of Arc. In this

letter he protested that natural philosophies which privilege

sense experience tend to dissect nature - to reduce macroscopic

events to atomistic elements - thereby creating the delusion that

reality consists of 'little things'. Those 'Experimentalists'

who believe in 'the constant testimony of their senses', he

complained, 'contemplate nothing but parts - and all parts are


8 CL,1, p. 354: to Thomas Poole, 16 October 1797.

9 Locke, Essay, 2.2.1, (p. 99).

10 Hume, Treatise, bk. 1, pt. 3, sec. 2, (pp. 120-1).

11 Hume, Enquiry, sec. 7, pt. 1, (p. 62).

necessarily little - and the Universe to them is but a mass of

little things.'(8)

Implicit in this later attack on sensationalism was a new

objection to mechanism, one that targetted its reductionistic

epistemology. Indeed, the sensationalism of Locke and his

followers was based on the assumption that perception and thought

can be broken down into fundamental, discrete units that

correspond to sense impressions. In Chapter I (p. 26) we saw

that Locke believed that the basic elements of thought were

'simple' ideas derived from individual sensations. He claimed,

for example, that(9)

though the qualities that affect our senses are, in thethings themselves, so united and blended that there is noseparation, no distance between them, yet it is plain,the ideas they produce in the mind enter by the sensessimple and unmixed.

Following Locke, Hume similarly maintained that 'it is impossible

perfectly to understand any idea, without tracing it up to its

origin, and examining that primary impression, from which it

arises.'(10) There were clear advantages for Hume in such a

reductionistic approach to ideas, modelled on Newton's analytical

method. It might enable us, he suggested, to 'attain a new

microscope or species of optics, by which, in the moral sciences,

the most minute, and most simple ideas may be so enlarged as to

fall readily under our apprehension'.(11) At the end of the

Queries in the Opticks Newton had in fact indicated that 'the

Method of Analysis', based on experiment and observation, had

important 'Moral' advantages. This method enabled one, Newton

explained, to 'proceed from Compounds to Ingredients, and from


12 Newton, Opticks, pp. 404-5.


14 CL,2, p. 708: to Thomas Poole, 23 March 1801.

15 Ibid., p. 709.

Motions to the Forces producing them; and in general, from

Effects to their Causes, and from particular Causes to more

general ones ...'. He went on to claim that such a method would

greatly benefit the moral sphere: 'if natural Philosophy in all

its Parts, by pursuing this Method, shall at length be perfected,

the Bounds of Moral Philosophy will be also enlarged.'(12) We saw

(pp. 22, 28, 29) that the moral benefits of Newton's analytical

method were plain to Hartley, who argued that an understanding of

the precise environmental causes of behaviour could be used to

develop a happier and more just society. Hartley insisted that

it was 'of the utmost Consequence to Morality and Religion, that

the Affections and Passions should be analysed into their simple

compounding Parts, by reversing the Steps of the Associations

which concur to form them.'(13)

In 1797, Coleridge was starting to become hostile to such a

reductionistic approach to mental phenomena, though he did not at

that time appear to associate it with either Locke, Hume or

Hartley. Several years later, however, in the early 1800s, he

began to explicitly condemn these thinkers as Newton's

accomplices in a reductionistic programme of mechanistic

philosophy. Thus, echoing his 1797 criticism to Poole of those

philosophers obsessed with 'little things', in an 1801 letter to

the same friend, Coleridge first accused Locke of being the

originator of 'the party of the Little-ists'.(14) He went on to

express his intention to expose the 'artifices' of other 'little-

ists', then proceeded immediately to attack Newton. 'Deep

Thinking', he maintained,(15)


is attainable only by a man of deep Feeling, and ... allTruth is a species of Revelation. The more I understandof Sir Isaac Newton's works, the more boldly I dare utterto my own mind ... that I believe the Souls of 500 SirIsaac Newtons would go to the making up of a Shakspere ora Milton.

The implication of this passage is that Newton's 'mechanic

philosophy', and its attached sensationalist epistemology, are

intellectually and spiritually shallow. For they presume that

the ultimate causes of things can be known by a rational,

reductionistic procedure. For Coleridge, as the passage here

suggests, such truths could only be known through a kind of

revelation or inspiration - an unmediated spiritual knowing - and

never by human reason alone. As we read on in Coleridge's letter

we learn that his opinion was prompted by a reading of Newton's

Opticks, which he claimed to be studying in the hope of mastering

Newton's system before the age of thirty. Although he was

'exceedingly delighted with the beauty & neatness of [Newton's]

experiments' and 'the accuracy of his immediate Deductions from

them', Coleridge had serious reservations concerning 'the

opinions founded on these Deductions'. Thus, just as in his

attack on Newton in the footnote to Joan of Arc, he was once

again taking issue with the Queries, and we saw that his main

complaint about the Queries was that Newton had endeavoured to

explain the basis of activity in the universe in terms of a

material aether. This hostility to Newton's (apparent) ontology

was probably one motive for Coleridge's insinuation that Newton's

philosophy was the product of a superficial intellect. But we

discover that Coleridge's main complaint now about the Queries

was levelled at what he claimed were their thoroughly

sensationalist premises. For he accused Newton here not only of

being a materialist, but also of embracing a view - seen by

Coleridge as implicit in a sensationalist epistemology - that the

mind has no active role in perception, but merely re-acts, in a


16 Ibid.

17 Newton, Opticks, pp. 345, 353.

18 See Sysak, 'Coleridge's Construction', pp. 67-9. In several placesin the Queries, Newton provides a clear indication that he espoused atraditional dualism, in which the mind is not passive, butparticipates in the activity that is taken to be characteristic ofspirit. Query 31, in particular, defies Coleridge's criticism. Forthere Newton likens God's omnipotence in nature to the mind'sactivity in perception: 'the parts of the universe', Newton asserted,are '[God's] Creatures ... subservient to his Will; and he is no morethe Soul of them, than the Soul of Man is the Soul of the Species ofThings carried through the Organs of Sense into the place of itsSensation, where it perceives them by means of its immediatePresence.' Newton, Opticks, p. 403.

mechanical fashion, to sensory impressions. Newton's 'whole

Theory', Coleridge declared,(16)

is ... so exceedingly superficial as without improprietyto be deemed false. Newton was a mere materialist -mind, in his system is always passive, - a lazy looker-onon an external World. If the mind be not passive, if itbe indeed made in God's Image, & that too in thesublimest sense - the Image of the Creator - there isground for suspicion, that any system built on thepassiveness of the mind must be false, as a system.

This criticism of Newton's Queries was clearly a response to

the general empirical methodology of the Opticks, in which

significant emphasis is given to the reports of the senses.

Indeed, in several of the Queries, Newton portrayed the mind as

passive in perception, suggesting that vision and hearing are

produced by vibrations transmitted in a fluid, aetherial medium

to the brain.(17) This was of course a notion that Coleridge had

come across in Hartley, but, as I have indicated in another

place, it somewhat misrepresents Newton's views on the mind.(18)

It is in fact likely that Coleridge's attack on Newton in his

letter to Poole was directed at the much more overt

sensationalism of other 'little-ists' like Locke and Hartley,

whom he was coming to strongly oppose and whom he saw as applying

Newton's analytical method to psychology. For instance, in a

letter to Poole of the previous week, Coleridge claimed to have


19 CL,2, pp. 706-7: to Thomas Poole, 16 March 1801.

20 See ibid., p. 676: to Thomas Poole, 13 February 1801.

21 Letter to Nicolas Remond, January 10, 1714, in Leibniz, PhilosophicalPapers, vol. 2, p. 1064, cited in Cassirer, Platonic Renaissance,p. 153.

seen through the reductionistic 'doctrine of Association, as

taught by Hartley, and with it all the irreligious metaphysics of

modern Infidels'. In this same letter, he also mentioned that he

was preparing a study that would expose 'the originality & merits

of Locke, Hobbes, & Hume', all of whom were commonly regarded as

advocating the sensationalism that Coleridge was attacking in

Newton's Queries.(19)

III.3 The Politics of Innate Ideas

This new onslaught on thinkers toward whom he had not

previously been hostile was partly prompted by Coleridge's

intensive reading at this time of Leibniz and Kant.(20) Both

these philosophers had contested the dependence of mechanistic

natural philosophies upon sense-based knowledge, and criticized

the misapplication of the former in areas they deemed outside the

scope of physics. Leibniz, for instance, had earlier in the

century complained that 'materialists ... or those who accept

only a mechanical philosophy, are wrong in rejecting metaphysical

considerations and trying to explain everything in terms of sense

experience.'(21) This complaint was directed against what Leibniz

saw as an undesirable tendency to apply mechanism to non-physical

domains: the phenomenal reality investigated by the mechanical

philosophy, he insisted, was only one part of human experience.

In the anti-Lockean New Essays on Human Understanding (published

posthumously in 1765) Leibniz argued that knowledge was not

solely derived from the senses. For the mind also operated

independently of sensory experience, a fact for which evidence


22 Leibniz, New Essays, pp. 48-50.

23 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 37-73.

24 CL,2, p. 706: to Thomas Poole, 16 March 1801. Levere has suggestedthat Coleridge at this time may have been familiar with A. F. M.Willich's 1798 Elements of the Critical Philosophy. In the'Historical Introduction' to this work, the author offered a succintdescription of Kant's epistemological innovation: 'Kant remarked,that Mathematics and Natural Philosophy had properly become sciencesby the discovery, that reason a priori attributed certain principlesto objects; and he inquired, whether we could not also succeed betterin Metaphysics by taking it for granted, that objects must beaccommodated to the constitution of our mind, than by the commonsupposition, that all our knowledge must be regulated according toexternal objects.' Cited in Levere, Poetry realized in nature,p. 62. See Willich, Elements, p. 14.

could be found in the areas of mathematics, logic, metaphysics

and ethics.(22)

A similar conviction that the mind had innate capacities, not

derivable from experience, was later expressed by Immanuel Kant

in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781:1787). There, for example,

Kant argued that perception of external reality is structured by

formal conditions of space and time already present in the

mind.(23) This idea was seized on by Coleridge as supporting his

own view that the mind's agency is essential in perception, and a

clear indication of its irreducible, spiritual nature. Thus,

immediately preceding the statement to Poole quoted above that he

had exposed the flaws in Hartley's associationism, Coleridge

claimed that he had now 'completely extricated the notions of

Time, and Space'.(24)

Coleridge was plainly impressed, then, by innatist tendencies

he found in the philosophies of Leibniz and Kant. His reasons

for condemning sensationalist epistemologies and psychologies,

however, were not just technical or even religious. As indicated

in this chapter's introduction, they were linked to his growing

opposition to ascendant individualistic ideologies which

threatened the traditional social order.


25 CC,12, vol. 2, p. 960: marginalia on the 1791 edition of Hartley'sObservations which included a third volume of 'Notes and Additions'by Herman Andrew Pistorius. The editors date these marginalia asbetween 1799 and 1802. Coleridge's position was not unlike thatexpressed by James Beattie - one of the 'common sense' philosophersPriestley attacked - who argued that there were inherent differencesin the quantity of 'common sense' possessed by individuals, and

(continued...)

We saw in Chapter I that the sensationalist attack on innate

ideas, undertaken by Locke and his followers, had an anti-

traditionalist, political agenda. Notions of innate principles

and ideas, Locke complained, were irrational, dangerous and

potentially tyrannical. While sense experience was subject to

verification by others, innate ideas were not, so could be

unjustly invoked by those in power to defend traditional

privileges. We noted that Locke's politically motivated assault

on innatism was continued in the eighteenth century by his

disciples, and that it was Gay's attack on Hutcheson's notion of

an innate 'moral sense' that inspired Hartley to show that

'morality' could be explained quite adequately by the association

of ideas derived from the senses. We observed further that later

in the century the Lockean, sensationalist agenda against

innatism was taken up by Priestley, who censured what he claimed

was a politically dangerous notion of innate principles or

'instincts' found in the writings of the Scottish 'common sense'

philosophers.

Around 1800, Coleridge began to explicitly defend innate

ideas, and even the notion of innate psychological differences,

against Locke, Hartley, Paley and others. For example, in

marginal annotations on a passage quoted earlier from Hartley's

Observations (p. 29, above), Coleridge disputed Hartley's

uniformitarian claim that, for 'Beings of the same Nature', any

intellectual or moral differences would be eliminated by exposure

to 'the same Impressions and Associations'. Coleridge underlined

the phrase,'the same Nature', and then queried, 'Is there no

difference in the organs, or a priori causes of Ideas?'(25) This


25(...continued)claimed that 'such diversities are ... to be referred, for the mostpart, to the original constitution of the mind, which it is not inthe power of education to alter.' Cited in McEvoy and McGuire, 'Godand Nature', p. 375. The citation is taken from James Beattie'sEssay on the Nature and Immortality of Truth, in Opposition toSophistry and Scepticism, (Edinburgh, 1771), p. 45.

26 CN,1, entry 938: April-November, 1801.

27 More, Several Philosophical Writings, vol. 1, p. 17.

opposition to Hartley's uniformitarian psychology reflects

Coleridge's growing distrust after 1800 of philosophies with

anti-hierarchical tendencies and increasing support for the

traditional, landed social order.

More evidence of his increasing preoccupation from the early

1800s with the issue of innate ideas is found in letters and

notebooks. In one of the latter, for instance, there is a brief

reference to a chapter on innate ideas in the Antidote against

Atheism (1653) by the Cambridge 'Platonist', Henry More.(26) In

the chapter in question, More attacked those who believe 'that

the Soul has no Knowledge nor Notion, but what is in a Passive

way impressed or delineated upon her from the Objects of Sense'.

To such a sensationalist position, More opposed his own Platonic

view that the mind is not passively constituted by experience,

but contains knowledge prior to any experience, that 'there is an

active and actuall Knowledge in a man, of which ... outward

Objects are rather the re-minders than the first begetters or

implanters.'(27) Coleridge was probably attracted to this

Platonic answer to sensationalist philosophies for religious

reasons, but this was not his only motivation. For More's

defence of innatism could also be seen as having political

implications, as More in fact indicated. In the Antidote, he had

used St. Anselm's ontological argument to demonstrate that God's

existence can be proven from the innate idea we have of a perfect


28 Ibid., pp. 9-36.

29 Ibid., p. 146. In his rebuttal of this objection More elaborated onthis 'grand suspicion of Atheists'. The latter claimed (he said)'that this Notion of a God is onely a crafty Figment of Politicians,whereby they would contain the People in Obedience'. Ibid., p. 166.

30 CL,2, pp. 677-703: to Josiah Wedgwood, February 1801. Somediscussion of these letters and their background is provided inBrinkley, 'Coleridge on Locke'.

being.(28) In an appendix to his work, however, he listed several

major objections that had been raised against this ontological

argument. One of these was 'that God did not put this Idea of

himself into the Mind of Man, but the subtiler sort of

Politicians, that have alwaies used Religion as a mere Engine of

State.'(29) Now this was the kind of objection being made by

Locke and his followers about the political dangers of a belief

in innate moral principles: a belief which could be used to

mislead people into unquestioning acceptance of traditional

authority. This of course does not mean that all those who

defended innate ideas on philosophical or religious grounds had

such a political objective. But we shall now see that, in

Coleridge's defence of innatism against Locke, the political

dimension was explicit.

Locke's treatment of innate ideas was contested by Coleridge

in several letters of 1801 to his patron, the industrialist

Josiah Wedgwood. In these letters, Coleridge claimed that Locke

had not, as was commonly held, overturned the notion of innate

ideas.(30) With many others, Coleridge presumed that Locke's

target was Descartes, yet Coleridge did not agree (he told

Wedgwood) that Descartes endorsed innate ideas. So Locke's

targets were 'Men of Straw', 'neither more nor less than Mr

Locke's own Ideas of Reflection'. Moreover, he declared, 'there

is no Principle, no organic part ... of Mr Locke's Essay which


31 CL,2, pp. 686, 684, 699.

32 Ibid., p. 692.

33 Ibid., p. 696. Coleridge's continuing support for a doctrine ofinnate ideas and opposition to Lockean sensationalism is apparent inhis later writings. For example, in one of his PhilosophicalLectures of 1818-19, he discussed Locke's philosophy, adducingarguments like those found in his 1801 letters to Wedgwood. Thecentral problem with Locke's epistemology, he maintained in hislecture, lay in the depiction of ideas as the result of sense-impressions entering into contact with the mind. Locke could haveavoided such an unfortunate, 'mechanical' representation of theorigin of ideas, Coleridge claimed, had he more precisely describedideas as being 'elicited', rather than caused, by impressions. PL,p. 378. In other words, Coleridge viewed ideas Platonically, asinborn and merely requiring an external stimulus to be aroused. Heoffered the following organic analogy: 'Mr. Locke's phrases seem tosay that the sun, the rain, the manure, and so on, had made thewheat, had made the barley and so forth ... [However] if for this yousubstitute the assertion that a grain of wheat might remain for everand be perfectly useless and to all purposes non-apparent, had it notbeen that the congenial sunshine and proper soil called it forth -everything in Locke would be perfectly rational.' Ibid., p. 379.

did not [previously] exist in the metaphysical System of Des

Cartes'.(31)

Coleridge was trying to make three main points. The first

was that, either out of ignorance or dishonesty, Locke had chosen

the wrong target for his assault on innate ideas. He had

misunderstood Descartes, or possibly had not even read the

Frenchman, alleged Coleridge.(32) The second point was that Locke

did not deserve his reputation as an innovative philosopher, for

his philosophy was not novel: indeed, it was little different

from the very system he claimed to be refuting. Having thus

attempted to discredit Locke's originality and competence to deal

with the question of innate ideas, Coleridge confided to Wedgwood

that he did 'not think the Doctrine of innate Ideas ... so

utterly absurd & ridiculous, as Aristotle, Des Cartes, and Mr

Locke have concurred in representing it.'(33)

Coleridge's attack here on Locke's sensationalist refutation

of innatism should be interpreted as reflecting an increasing

hostility to the moral and political implications of Locke's

system. Aarsleff has already pointed out indeed, that attempts


34 Aarsleff, 'Locke's Reputation', pp. 401-7, 412-17.

35 CL,2, p. 701.

(like that of Coleridge) to undermine Locke's originality were

becoming a standard feature of the nineteenth-century British

Establishment's war on Utilitarianism. As the latter was

popularly seen as stemming from Locke, it could be subverted by

casting doubts on Locke's reputation.(34)

Hints of the political motivation for Coleridge's opposition

to Lockean sensationalism are in fact provided in the final pages

of his last letter to Wedgwood, where he adduced further reasons

why he thought the philosopher's intellectual standing in Britain

was so undeservedly high. To begin with, he argued, Locke was

associated with the victorious party in the 1688 Revolution, and

as a result 'his works [were] cried up by the successful

Revolutionary Party with the usual Zeal & industry of political

Faction.' Furthermore, Locke's philosophy had found powerful

advocates among Low Churchmen and Dissenters for the way in which

it seemingly harmonized Christian beliefs with the empiricist

epistemology accompanying the recently resuscitated, Epicurean

atomism of Hobbes and Gassendi. Locke's reputation as a deeply

religious man, Coleridge argued, spared the Church of having to

take a stand against a growing tendency to appeal to reason and

experience, rather than revelation, in religious matters.

Coleridge cynically observed:(35)

When the fundamental Principles of the new EpicureanSchool were taught by Mr Locke, & all the Doctrines ofReligion & Morality, forced into juxtaposition & apparentcombination with them, the Clergy imagined that adisagreeable Task was fairly taken off their hands - theycould admit what they were few of them able to overthrow,& yet shelter themselves from the consequences of theadmission by the authority of Mr Locke.

A third factor contributing to Locke's status, Coleridge's letter

went on, was national pride in the opinion that, just as 'Newton


36 Ibid., pp. 701-3.

37 See Macpherson, Possessive Individualism, chapter 5. Macphersonshows that Locke's individualistic natural rights sanctioned theunlimited individual accumulation of property in emerging bourgeoiscapitalism.

had ... overthrown Cartesian Physics', Locke had dethroned

'Cartesian Metaphysics'. In addition, Voltaire's influential

promotion of Locke and denigration of Newton's opponent, Leibniz,

had similarly advanced Locke's reputation. But even more

significant than all of these considerations, Coleridge

maintained, was a current hostility to metaphysics, for which

there were several reasons. First of all, there was the

overriding importance that the British attached to commercial

activity, which had produced an abundance of lawyers. Added to

this was the fact that the country had too few universities.

Lastly, and most importantly, the established Church was to blame

for this state of affairs by appointing its members on the basis

of their acquiescence in the thirty-nine articles rather than on

intellectual merit.(36)

For Coleridge, then, Locke's popularity was linked with a

number of philosophical and social developments, all of which, in

the early 1800s, he was coming to oppose. It was connected with

the revival of Epicurean atomism in the seventeenth century, and

a concomitant epistemological emphasis on sense-based knowledge -

developments which had been opportunistically embraced by the

Church. It was also related to the liberal politics of those who

had triumphed in 1688 and with the commercial ideology that those

politics had subsequently propelled. For the individualistic

liberalism of Locke that was endorsed by the 1688 revolutionary

settlement lent itself, in the latter part of the eighteenth

century, to the laissez-faire economics that were being

championed by the new commercial classes, especially by

Dissenters like Priestley.(37) That Coleridge could view all

these philosophical, political and economic developments as


38 Coleridge's early Platonism is discussed in Deschamps, Pensée deColeridge, pp. 373-406.

39 Plato, Timaeus, 27D-28A.

interrelated, and connected with Locke's sensationalist assault

on innate ideas, will perhaps not seem so surprising, once we

observe the way in which his own moral and political perspectives

were intertwined with an alternative, anti-sensationalist,

Platonic theory of knowledge.

III.4 Coleridge's 'Platonic Old England'

Indeed, underlying Coleridge's early critique of the

mechanical philosophy and its sensationalist, Lockean

epistemology was a conception of the world that was unashamedly

Platonic.(38) Plato, in several of his works, had made the

important hierarchical distinction between two different kinds of

knowledge: that procured through abstract reflection about the

world and that obtained through sense experience. True

knowledge, Plato claimed, is attained only through the first,

'rational' mode of apprehending reality. Knowledge acquired by

means of the senses, on the other hand, is delusory. In the

Timaeus, he offered arguments to support his epistemology.

There, for instance, he maintained that the object of knowledge

obtained through theoretical reasoning is timeless and

unchanging. This sort of knowledge is plainly superior to

sensory knowledge, which is based on the ever-changing world of

temporal, material existence. 'We must', he insisted,(39)

begin by distinguishing between that which always is andnever becomes from that which is always becoming butnever is. The one is apprehensible by intelligence withthe aid of reasoning, being eternally the same, the otheris the object of opinion and irrational sensation, comingto be and ceasing to be, but never fully real.


40 Plato, Republic, 529A-530C.

41 Ibid., 514A-521B.

42 Southey, Joan of Arc, Bk. 2, ll. 19-24, p. 40.

For Plato, the unvarying reality referred to here was an

ideal realm of 'forms', upon which the material world apprehended

by the senses is imperfectly patterned. An example of this ideal

reality, he indicated, is to be found in the spheres of

arithmetic and geometry, in which there exists an exactness not

found in nature. This point is well illustrated in a section of

the Republic, where Plato criticizes too much observation of the

heavens as inferior to the mathematical determination of the true

relations among physical objects. Knowledge of the things that

really matter - the 'ultimate unseen reality' - can never be

gained from sensation.(40) The famous 'allegory of the cave' in

the Republic elucidates this position. There, the realm of sense

experience is only a shadow or reflection of the truly real, yet

most people mistake it for the totality of existence.(41)

We earlier saw that such a profound mistrust of sensation was

a part of Coleridge's own way of thinking from the time of Joan

of Arc. So, it is not surprising to find him in that poem

adapting Plato's cave allegory to advance the view that knowledge

of a fundamental, immaterial reality could only be represented

symbolically, for it could never be procured by the senses. 'All

that meets the bodily sense', Coleridge declared, is

'symbolical',(42)

... one mighty alphabetFor infant minds; and we in this low worldPlaced with our backs to bright RealityThat we may learn with young unwounded kenThings from their shadows.

We have seen that it was the influence of this imperceptible,

immaterial sphere of reality upon phenomena that mattered for the

young Coleridge, and in Joan of Arc he criticized those who


43 Ibid., ll. 29-31, p. 40. Another instance of Coleridge's adoption ofa Platonic attitude to knowledge in this early period is found in thepoem 'Religious Musings' (1796) where he wrote (ll. 396-8, PW,1,p. 124), in a more lyrical vein, that 'Life is a vision shadowy ofTruth;/ And vice, and anguish, and the weary grave, Shapes of adream!' In slightly later editions of this poem, Coleridge indicatedthat he thought these lines echoed Bishop Berkeley's immaterialism,and indeed, on a couple of occasions around this time, he referred tohimself as a 'Berkleian'. See: PW,1, p. 124n.2; CL,1, pp. 278, 335:to John Thelwall, 17 December 1796; to Robert Southey, 17 July 1797.His enthusiasm for Berkeley at this time is indicated by the factthat he named his second son, born in 1798, after the Irish bishop.His first son, born in 1796, was revealingly given the name Hartley.It is important to note that Coleridge saw Berkeley's philosophy asmore harmonious with Platonism than with the tradition of Lockeanempiricism. In one of his 1801 letters to Wedgwood, for instance, hedeclared that Berkeley 'owed much to Plato & Malebranch, but nothingto Locke'. CL,2, p. 703: to Josiah Wedgwood, February 1801.

44 Plato, Republic, 473-529. See also Hutchison, 'Why Does Plato UrgeRulers to Study Astronomy?'

arrogantly take the senses to be the exclusive source of

knowledge about the world, 'who deem themselves most free,/ When

they within this gross and visible sphere/ Chain down the winged

thought'.(43) A frankly Platonic epistemology, then, sustained

the immaterialistic natural philosophy that Coleridge held in the

mid-1790s.

But there were also important political implications in such

an epistemology, which are apparent in Coleridge's thought from

this early period, and which reflect Plato's own politics. For

in the Republic Plato had argued that a philosophical elite that

has privileged access to the realm of unchanging 'ideas' should

govern, while the mass of people who merely have knowledge of the

illusory, ephemeral world of sense experience must be excluded

from power.(44) So, from a Platonic point of view, the

sensationalist epistemology of the 'mechanic philosophy' - which

Coleridge saw as sustaining atheistic political ideologies - is

an inadequate basis for making political judgements.

The fundamental connection between Coleridge's early thinking

about natural philosophy and an elitist view of knowledge and

politics is indicated by Wylie. Wylie has persuasively argued


45 Wylie, Young Coleridge, pp. 12-26, 47-61.

46 Idem, 'Coleridge and the Lunaticks', pp. 37-8.

47 CC,1, p. 6.

that the young Coleridge saw himself as one of the inheritors of

a tradition of ancient wisdom that had more recently included

Newton, Franklin, Hartley and Priestley. Coleridge considered

himself to be a successor to these 'patriot sages': a new member

of the 'elect band' that alone knew how to read the 'book of

nature' and thus bring about a positive transformation in society

(cf. above, pp. 45-57).(45) Another example of such elitism,

Wylie elsewhere has pointed out, is found in the deliberate

fashioning of such poems as 'Religious Musings' to ensure that

their political message would be comprehensible only to a select

readership of like-minded, millenarian radicals.(46)

Such a hierarchical, Platonic view of knowledge pervades

Coleridge's thought in the mid-1790s. In his 1795 lectures, for

example (notwithstanding his advocacy of social and political

reform) he expressed clear reservations about the ability of the

poorer, uneducated sections of society to exercise political

wisdom. The potential problems of an extended franchise had been

demonstrated to him by the aftermath of the French Revolution.(47)

The annals of the French Revolution have recorded inLetters of Blood, that the Knowledge of the Few cannotcounteract the Ignorance of the Many; that the Light ofPhilosophy, when it is confined to a small Minority,points out the Possessors as the Victims, rather than theIlluminators, of the Multitude.

While this statement implied that the solution to the problems

attendant upon democracy lay in education, Coleridge subsequently

suggested that such enlightenment was not so easily attainable.

In a later lecture, he argued that the poorer classes would only

achieve political and economic equality by initially deferring to

a few, exceptional individuals. The attainment of an egalitarian


48 Ibid., p. 218.

49 CL,1, p. 480, to Thomas Poole, 8 April 1799. Coleridge'scondescension and suspicion of the poor needs to be balanced againsthis expressed public concern for their welfare. His attitude wascharacteristic of many in the late eighteenth and early nineteenthcenturies, who were born into the Establishment yet did not fullyidentify with it. Chandler uses the term 'Tory-Radical' to describesuch thinkers as Coleridge who defended the poor while arguing thatthey required guidance from 'enlightened' individuals. Chandler,Dream of Order, pp. 4-5.

paradise on Earth was 'not to be procured by the tumultuous

uprising of an indignant multitude but [by] an unresisting yet

deeply principled Minority'.(48) Such an elitist attitude is much

more pronounced in a 1799 letter to Poole, where Coleridge

insisted that the kind of education offered by religion provided

the only means of keeping the lower classes in check: 'You have

been often unwisely fretful with me when I have pressed upon you

their depravity. - Without religious joys, and religious terrors

nothing can be expected from the inferior Classes in

society ...'.(49)

In Coleridge's writings of the early 1800s, we see an

increasing number of approving references to Platonism. In a

letter of 1802, for example, we find him making a favourable

comparison between Platonic, Judaic and Christian conceptions of

the divinity: 'if there be any two subjects which have in the

very depth of my Nature interested me, it has been the Hebrew &

Christian Theology, & the Theology of Plato.' Just as he had

contrasted his own Platonic vision of the world in Joan of Arc

with that of a 'Newtonian' 'mechanic philosophy', he now

counterposed the latter's (apparent) absentee deity to the

providential God of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. 'In the

Hebrew Poets', he claimed, 'each Thing has a life of it's own, &

yet they are all one Life. In God they move & live, & have their

Being - not had, as the cold System of Newtonian Theology


50 CL,2, p. 866: to William Sotheby, 10 September 1802. Coleridge'sattitude to Newton here contrasts markedly with an earlier opinionexpressed to the radical Thelwall, where he similarly argued that theChristian God was one 'in whom we all of us move, & have our being',but defended Christianity on the grounds that 'this Religion wasbelieved by Newton, Locke, & Hartley'. CL,1, p. 280: to JohnThelwall, 17 December 1796.

51 Cf. Sysak, 'Coleridge's Construction', pp. 78-80.

52 CN,2, entry 2598: May- August 1805.

represents/ but have.'(50) Once again, Coleridge was affirming

the primacy of an underlying, spiritual reality in the universe

which he felt a Newtonian, mechanistic philosophy had done away

with. Ignoring that this was probably not Newton's view,

Coleridge went on here to praise the 'platonizing Spirit' of

Milton, who, understanding that the real could only be

represented symbolically, 'wrote nothing without an interior

meaning'. Interestingly, this elucidates Coleridge's comparison

(noted above) between the scientist Newton, and the poets Milton

and Shakespeare. For Coleridge, Newton's mechanistic depiction

of the universe implied that the scientist lacked the

'platonizing spirit' which could apprehend the true, immaterial

nature of reality.(51) The dependence of the 'mechanic

philosophy' on sense-derived knowledge, Coleridge believed, meant

that it could never account for the spiritual basis of phenomena.

True knowledge of nature was available only to those who

acknowledged such a spiritual basis.

Coleridge's attraction to this hierarchical, Platonic way of

understanding the world is again evident in a note from 1805,

where he expressed a literary predilection for a 'spiritual

platonic old England'. Those who typified this 'platonic old

England' were authors such as Shakespeare, Milton, Bacon,

Harrington and Wordsworth.(52) The antithesis of the spirit

displayed by these writers, Coleridge explained disapprovingly,

was that epitomized by Locke in philosophy and Pope in poetry.


53 See Abrams, Mirror and the Lamp, pp. 159-77. Coleridge was later toexpress this contrast in terms of a distinction made famous by AugustWilhelm von Schlegel (1767-1845), one of the founders of the Romanticmovement in Germany. In some lectures of 1808, Schlegeldistinguished the new Romantic ideal of great art from previous Neo-classical formulations by arguing that, while in Romanticism the formof the work of art was 'organic', in Neo-classicism it was'mechanical'. What he meant by this, Schlegel explained, is that'organic' form springs, as it were, from the nature of the subject inquestion. In such a process, the work of art seems to take on acompletely unique life of its own, as if it were unfolding accordingto intrinsic 'organic' principles. In 'mechanical' form, on theother hand, the particularity of the subject is submerged by aconcern for extrinsic rules. Schlegel, Course of Lectures, p. 340.This distinction was restated by Coleridge to a British public inlectures of 1811-13 on Shakespearean drama. CC,5, vol. 1, pp. 358,495.

Superficially, this might appear to be a response to the

canons of eighteenth-century literary taste against which

Coleridge and his fellow Romantics were certainly reacting. Pope

was seen to be one of the chief representatives of a restrictive,

rule-bound Neoclassicism in literature, and a Lockean

epistemology was associated with this tradition. For Locke's

epistemological reduction of human thought to atomistic sense

impressions had been adopted as the basis of eighteenth-century

theories of the artistic imagination. In contrast to what was to

become the Romantic movement's favoured simile of the imagination

as an organic entity that operates according to its own rules and

purposes, Neoclassical theorists saw artistic creation in terms

of a mechanical reconstitution by the mind of sensory stimuli

supplied by the external environment.(53)

Such an aesthetic contrast might indeed be implied in

Coleridge's remarks here, but it was not his only concern. For

he also explicitly contrasted his 'platonic old England' with a

'commercial G. Britain', and he associated this new image of the

nation with men like Hume, Priestley, Paley, Darwin and Pitt -

figures identified with philosophical, political, theological and

scientific matters rather than with literature.


54 CC,4, vol. 1, p. 488. Here, Coleridge correspondingly referred toPlato as 'the Athenian Verulam'.

55 See Sabine, Political Theory, pp. 496-512.

The authors cited above as representing Coleridge's 'platonic

old England' similarly had associations that went beyond the

purely literary or aesthetic. Some of these associations were

scientific, for we have just seen that Coleridge contrasted a

'Platonic' world-view (found in Shakespeare and Milton) with a

mechanistic, 'Newtonian' one. In a similar vein (as we shall see

more fully in Chapter V) he was coming to regard Bacon as a

thinker whose method took one beyond the realm of mere phenomena

to the underlying, immaterial structure of nature. Bacon,

Coleridge later wrote, was 'the British Plato'.(54)

But there were political implications too in Coleridge's

advocacy of a 'platonic old England'. Both the 'old platonists'

Harrington and Milton, for instance, had advocated the

establishment of a commonwealth under the control of an

aristocracy.(55) In the previous chapter, we observed that such

an aristocratic society was the kind that Coleridge was

increasingly coming to favour in the early 1800s. His 'platonic

old England', then, implied a similarly hierarchical social order

that derived its justification from a hierarchical, Platonic

epistemology and an attached immaterialistic cosmology. Such a

society, however, was quickly disappearing to make way for a new

'commercial G. Britain', sustained by a mechanistic, 'Newtonian'

science and an associated 'Lockean' sensationalism. In order to

subvert this 'commercial G. Britain', then, Coleridge believed it

was necessary to expose the philosophical premises upon which it

was based. We have seen that this is something he was beginning

to do from the early 1800s, through his criticisms of Newton and

Locke. Before canvassing further his assault on these thinkers'

'mechanic philosophy', we must first examine why he was opposed

to a 'commercial G. Britain'.


56 'Pitt and Bonaparte: Pitt', Morning Post, 19 March 1800, CC,3,vol. 1, pp. 219-26, (p. 225).

III.5 'Commercial G. Britain'

We have already mentioned (pp. 18, 19) that a hostility to

commerce was present in Coleridge's thought from the mid-1790s.

In his Bristol lectures, for example, he had voiced his

objections to the mercenary interests of some of his fellow

Unitarians in the reform movement. His Pantisocratic beliefs at

that time were clearly in conflict with the idea of commerce for

purely monetary gain, as they were with the notion of property

accumulation in general. While Coleridge later abandoned his

Pantisocratic egalitarianism in favour of an increasingly

aristocratic politics, he continued to oppose what he felt was an

excessive importance given to commerce in Britain.

Thus, in a damning 1800 critique of Pitt in the Morning Post,

he argued that one of the evils that had resulted from the prime

minister's period in office had been an 'overbalance of the

commercial interest'.(56) The word 'overbalance' here indicated

that Coleridge was not condemning commerce outright, but that he

saw it as having a disproportionate value compared with other

facets of the nation's economy. A slightly earlier article in

the same newspaper had in fact given an indication of the sort of

balance Coleridge felt would be conducive to Britain's economic

well-being. The article, entitled 'Our Commercial Politicians',

disputed the view held by some members of the government that it

was in the country's commercial interest to pursue war with

France. Coleridge's argument against the continuation of war was

pitched in its advocates' own terms. Cessation of hostilities

and recommencement of trade with France, he claimed, would

initially spur British trade. But, more importantly, it might

serve to discourage radical tendencies in France by allowing the

landed interest to re-establish its power. If such logic fell on


57 'Our Commercial Politicians', Morning Post, 1 February 1800, ibid.,pp. 140-4.

deaf ears, he had ready another line of reasoning. Britain's

attempts to retain its commercial pre-eminence in Europe through

war, he maintained, might not only impart such 'a superiority to

the moneyed interest of the country over the landed, as might be

fatal to our Constitution', but might also have a detrimental

effect on 'the condition and morals of the lower and more

numerous classes' at home. He went on to suggest that those with

landed property were less prone to corruption than those involved

in commerce. Moreover, he claimed, the country's wartime

commercial gain had occurred at the expense of domestic

development and the welfare of the working-class population, much

of which had been made dependent upon charity. He concluded by

insisting that commerce ought to be seen as but a useful adjunct

to other aspects of the nation's life, such as its agrarian

production and maritime security.(57)

Coleridge's opposition to a 'commercial G. Britain' in 1800,

then, was based on several complaints. If commercial interests

had their way and war continued, France would have less chance of

regaining the economic stability that was conducive to the

conservative politics that Britain wished its neighbours to have.

While, on the home front, the 'overbalance of the commercial

interest' not only hurt the poorer sections of the population,

but also threatened the traditional, agrarian basis of the

country's political and economic structure. There were thus

pressing political reasons, as well as humanitarian ones, to

correct this 'overbalance'.

We can thus begin to explain why Coleridge in 1805 viewed the

various individuals listed above as exemplifying a 'commercial G.

Britain'. To begin with, the British government could be held

primarily responsible for what he saw as a continuing tendency to


58 'Pitt and Bonaparte: Pitt', Morning Post, 19 March 1800, ibid.,pp. 219-26.

overvalue commerce. As Pitt was once again prime minister in

1805 after a brief period out of office, it was natural that he

be included in this list. Moreover, in the mid-1790s, Coleridge

had similarly blamed Pitt for the misery inflicted on the poor as

a result of government policies. As a young radical, Coleridge

had objected not only to Pitt's heavy-handed treatment of

political opponents, but also to the prime minister's apparent

unconcern for the widespread economic hardship produced by the

war against France. This compassionless politics was symptomatic

of the individualistic pursuit of financial gain that Coleridge

saw as characterizing a 'commercial G. Britain'. By contrast,

the 'spiritual platonic old England' that was being displaced by

these new mercenary attitudes, implied a traditional,

agricultural society in which fellow-feeling was valued.

In Coleridge's 1800 Morning Post article on Pitt, just such a

contrast was clearly implied.(58) There, the young journalist

offered a penetrating analysis of the prime minister's character.

The problem with Pitt, Coleridge argued, was that he had had no

real 'moral' education: his emotions had not been allowed to

develop and he had been sheltered from ordinary experience.

Coleridge used an organic metaphor to illustrate his point.

Pitt's education, he claimed, could be compared to 'a plant sown

and reared in a hot-house'. Like the plant, Pitt had been well

protected from the elements, so had not experienced a 'natural'

emotional development. He was 'a being, who had had no feelings

connected with man or nature, no spontaneous impulses'.

Coleridge claimed that Pitt's character had been 'cast, rather

than grew': the future prime minister had been thrown from

infancy into a ready-made 'mould' of family aspirations and

'political connections'. His separation from the ordinary world,

Coleridge went on, had made him view it in abstract terms,


59 Holmes, Early Visions, p. 264.

disconnected from any real, felt experience. It was because of

such disconnection from ordinary life, Coleridge claimed, that

the emotionally underdeveloped prime minister had brutally

rejected calls for reform and waged a war that exacerbated

poverty and benefited rich commercial interests. As Holmes has

suggested, Coleridge's article represented Pitt's education as

the antithesis of the 'organic' development that Romantic

thinkers were increasingly coming to favour: a development

parallel to that Burke saw in the nation, anchored in history and

tradition.(59)

The inclusion of Priestley among those who typified a

'commercial G. Britain' reflected similar concerns. We have

noted that there was already some hostility in the young

Coleridge's complaints about the self-interested, commercial

motives of Priestley and other middle-class Unitarians (see

above, pp. 18, 19). This hostility was exacerbated as Coleridge

increasingly identified himself with the landed interest. His

antagonism was also reflected in a new dissatisfaction with

Unitarian Christianity. While there were personal reasons for

such dissatisfaction, there were also obvious political ones.

For Unitarianism was conspicuous among the new commercial middle

classes, whose growing influence Coleridge saw as threatening the

traditional social order of a 'platonic old England'.

Coleridge's apostasy from Unitarianism occurred gradually,

and as late as 1798 he was still contemplating a career as a

Unitarian minister. This was partly from choice and also partly

out of a concern to have a means of providing for his young

family. He explained to his soon-to-be patron, Josiah Wedgwood,

that a Unitarian preaching position offered to him was

attractive, because it would supply 'a permanent income not


60 CL,1, p. 367: to Josiah Wedgwood, 5 January 1798.

61 Ibid., p. 372: to John Prior Estlin, 16 January 1798.

62 Ibid., p. 482: to Mrs. S. T. Coleridge, 8 April 1799.

63 CN,1, entry 467: September-November 1799.

inconsistent with [his] religious or political creeds'.(60) The

young Coleridge's high regard for Priestley was still strong at

this time, and we have already noted that he continued to praise

Priestley's chemistry as lending support to the scientist's 'more

sublime theological works.'(61)

One of the earliest indications that Coleridge was beginning

to question the faith he had embraced in his Cambridge years is

found in a 1799 letter written to his wife from Germany, after

learning of the death of his second son, Berkeley. Besides

conveying the impact of this calamity on Coleridge, the letter

also reveals a new hostility to the uniformitarian character of

Priestley's impersonal God:(62)

that God works by general laws are to me words withoutmeaning or worse than meaningless ... What and who arethese horrible shadows necessity and general law, towhich God himself must offer sacrifices - hecatombs ofSacrifices ... the more I think, the more I amdiscontented with the doctrines of Priestley.

Coleridge's dissatisfaction with the abstract rationality of

Unitarian theology was registered in a notebook entry a little

later. There, he pithily expressed his gloom over the available

alternatives to religious orthodoxy: 'Socinianism Moonlight -

Methodism &c A Stove! O for some Sun that shall unite Light &

Warmth'.(63)

Yet, despite such growing pessimism, Coleridge continued to

support the rational creed of Priestley. For instance, we find

him in 1802 writing to his friend, the Unitarian minister Estlin,

that 'the Quakers & Unitarians are the only Christians,


64 CL,2, p. 893: to John Prior Estlin, 7 December 1802. Some fourteenyears later, Coleridge expressed a vastly different opinion of thesetwo Christian sects. See below, p. 180.

65 Ibid., p. 1022: to Matthew Coates, 5 December 1803. Coleridge herereferred to this belief as 'the pure Fountain of all [my] moral &religious Feelings & [C]omforts', and noted that his correspondentwas 'the first man, from whom I heard that article of my Faithdistinctly enunciated'.

66 CN,1, entry 1543: October 1803. Coleridge's hostility to the ChurchEstablishment at this time is also clear from the fact that, in an1803 edition of his poems, he retained a footnote from the pro-revolutionary 'Religious Musings' (1794-6) which read: 'this passagealludes to the French Revolution: and the subsequent paragraph to thedownfall of Religious Establishments. I am convinced that theBabylon of the Apocalypse does not apply to Rome exclusively; but tothe union of Religion with Power and Wealth, wherever it is found.'PW,1, p. 121n.1.

67 CL,2, p. 807: to George Coleridge, 1 July 1802.

68 On the young Samuel's relationship to his brother, see Holmes, EarlyVisions, pp. 14-15, 19, 24, 146-7, 211.

altogether pure from Idolatry'.(64) In a letter of the following

year to another Unitarian friend he likewise insisted that

Trinitarians were 'Idolaters' and professed his continuing

adherence to a belief in 'the absolute Impersonality of the

Deity'.(65) In a similar vein was a note jotted down in the same

year: 'the Trinity that none but an Ideot can believe, & the

Existence of God which none but a madman can disbelieve.'(66)

These statements, however, must be contrasted with others, such

as his declaration in an 1802 letter to his brother George, 'that

the Socinian & Arian Hypotheses are utterly untenable; but what

to put in their place?'(67) Clearly, Coleridge was privately

undecided on what to believe. So to his Unitarian friends he

avowed doctrinal loyalty, while to his older, paternalistic

brother he was only too willing to explain that he had recanted

his unorthodox views.(68)

Revealingly, this last letter to his brother provides an

indication of the grounds for Coleridge's definitive apostasy

from Unitarianism several years later. For it strongly suggests,

as one commentator has remarked, that Coleridge 'approached


69 Miller, 'Private Faith', p. 72.

70 CL,2, p. 806: to George Coleridge, 1 July 1802.

religious orthodoxy by way of political orthodoxy'.(69) Although

Coleridge did not yet embrace Anglican teachings, his letter

voiced support, on constitutional grounds, for the principle of

an 'Established Church'. By this he meant that the Anglican

Church and its possessions were 'antecedent to any form of

Government in England'. He contrasted this special sanction for

the Church's authority with the lack of any similar warrant held

by the Dissenters in Britain and with the current situation in

France, where the Concordat between the Papacy and Napoleon had

recently been established. The result of the Concordat,

Coleridge complained, was that the Catholic Church in France was

now propertyless and subject to state direction on stipendiary

matters and episcopal election.(70)

Such remarks reflect Coleridge's new conservative fears that

the decline of religious authority in the state might lead to

social anarchy, like that witnessed in France just after the

Revolution. He had come to believe that an independent Church

offered the only safeguard against such a prospect. His

complaints about the Concordat between France and Rome in fact

stemmed as much from his concern about the British political

scene as from his antipathy to Napoleon's politics. Like his

precursor, Burke, Coleridge had one eye turned on the foe abroad

while the other was watching the adversary at home. This

adversary was coming to include all those who challenged the

authority of established religion, especially the Dissenters.

The clear preference expressed in his letter to his brother for

the constitutional authority of the Church of England over the

lack of any such authority in Nonconformist sects indicates that

Coleridge now disapproved of the latter for political reasons.

Such political considerations must have been critical in his


71 CN,2, entry 2448: February 1805. Piper notes that the UnitarianEstlin commented that Coleridge had become 'a miserable Calvinist'.Piper, 'Unitarian Consensus', p. 288.

72 Cf. Schaffer, 'States of Mind', pp. 282-3.

private struggle with Unitarian beliefs. Moreover, the

Unitarians were overtly hostile to the traditional social

hierarchy based on landed property that he increasingly saw as

necessary for maintaining social stability: their politics were

broadly liberal and they favoured the development of

manufacturing and trade over agriculture.

Unitarianism, then, was certainly not compatible with

Coleridge's 'platonic old England', and in 1805 he seems to have

finally abandoned the faith of his Cambridge years and of his

former mentor, Priestley. No longer persuaded that Christianity

consisted merely in believing in the historical fact and social

message of Christ, Coleridge now held that its key article of

faith was the Trinity, and asserted that 'Unitarianism in all its

Forms is Idolatry'.(71) Revealingly, Priestley had earlier

ascribed what he claimed were the corrupted Christian doctrines

of an immaterial soul and the Trinity to the influence of

Platonism, and we have seen (p. 43) that this argument had been

reiterated by Coleridge in the 1795 Bristol lectures. For

Priestley and the young Coleridge, the Platonic distinction

between a transcendent realm of truth and a mundane realm of

illusion served to vindicate those in power.(72) It is perhaps

not surprising, therefore, that an increasingly conservative

Coleridge was attracted to Platonism as a framework for his new-

found religious and political orthodoxy.

Significantly, at the time of his definitive rejection of

Unitarianism in 1805, Coleridge was living in Malta, where he had

obtained firstly a position as Private Secretary to the governor

of the island, Sir Alexander Ball, and then a post as acting

Public Secretary. Coleridge made an immediate impression on


73 On Coleridge in Malta, see: Holmes, Darker Reflections, pp. 16-50;Sultana, Coleridge in Malta and Italy.

74 CL,2, p. 1141: to William Sotheby, 5 July 1804. Coleridge's enduringrespect for Ball is also revealed in sketches of the governor's life,included in Coleridge's periodical of 1809-10, The Friend, afterlearning of Ball's death in 1809. See CC,4, vol. 2, pp. 99-100,252-6, 287-94, 347-56, 359-69.

75 See, for example, Thomson, England, pp. 23-4, 56-8.

Ball, a former admiral and friend of Nelson, and was soon

entrusted with the drafting of a series of confidential papers to

Nelson and the British administration setting out Ball's views on

British naval policy in the Mediterranean.(73) Coleridge's high

admiration for Ball is apparent in a letter of 1804, in which he

described Ball as 'the abstract Idea of a wise & good

Governor.'(74) That Coleridge's final rejection of Unitarianism

came while he was engaged in promoting the interests of the

governing class again suggests the influence of his new

conservative politics on his religious change of heart.

From the above, it is apparent that Coleridge's principal

objections to a 'commercial G. Britain' were both moral and

political. In Pitt's administration, for example, he found a

lack of humanitarian compassion, symptomatic of the self-interest

that characterized a mercenary, 'commercial' morality.

Priestley's Unitarian beliefs similarly tended to emphasize such

a dispassionate attitude to the world, and Coleridge saw this

attitude as linked to the middle-class, commercial interests of

the Unitarians and other Dissenters. The moral question that

concerned him, then, was closely connected with the socio-

political question of a changing social order in early

nineteenth-century Britain. The old hierarchy based on landed

property and linked to the Church of England was giving way to a

new hierarchy, in which commercial and industrial interests were

coming to play an increasingly prominent role.(75) Coleridge

disliked this new, 'commercial', social order and the egoistic

morality that he saw as underpinning it. We shall now go on to


76 CN,2, entry 2627: July-October 1805.

see why he viewed the mechanical philosophy, through its

sensationalist epistemology, as sustaining this egoistic

morality.

III.6 'Epicurean' Ethics

Coleridge's new attitude to the Church of England from the

mid-1800s is revealed in another note from 1805, in which he once

again complained about those thinkers who epitomized a

'commercial G. Britain'. Here he asserted that these thinkers

held an 'Erastian' position - that the Church should bow to

secular authority - and he implied that this Erastianism was

connected with an egoistic moral philosophy. 'The vile cowardly

selfish calculating Ethics of Paley, Priestley, Lock, & other

Erastians,' he protested, 'do woefully influence & determine our

course of action'.(76) It is not entirely clear why Coleridge

here linked Erastianism with an egoistic morality, but presumably

it was because he saw both as reducing the primacy of a

supernatural morality.

This hostility to egoistic philosophies was already apparent

in Coleridge's criticism, made in his letters to Wedgwood, of

Locke's reconciliation of the main tenets of 'the new Epicurean

School' with 'all the Doctrines of Religion & Morality' (see

above, p. 139). For Locke's 'Epicureanism' included not only an

atomistic physics, but also an Epicurean view of human beings as

fundamentally motivated by a self-interested pursuit of pleasure

and avoidance of pain. 'What has an aptness to produce pleasure

in us', Locke claimed, 'is that we call good, and what is apt to

produce pain in us we call evil, for no other reason but for its


77 Locke, Essay, 2.21.42, (p. 174). See also ibid., 2.20, (pp. 159-61).Such an egoistic psychology was extrapolated by the ancientEpicureans to the gods whom they similarly viewed as self-centred andunconcerned with human affairs. See Long, Hellenistic Philosophy,pp. 41-8.

78 'Comparison of the present state of France with that of Rome underJulius and Augustus Caesar. I', Morning Post, 21 September 1802,CC,3, vol. 1, pp. 311-20. That Coleridge was not antagonistic to allforms of republicanism is clear from his later article in the samenewspaper (also discussed in the previous chapter, pp. 118, 119)'Once a Jacobin Always a Jacobin', Morning Post, 21 October 1802,ibid., pp. 367-73. There (p. 370) Coleridge claimed that Jacobinismwas not synonymous with republicanism, for 'Milton was a pureRepublican, and yet his notions of government were highlyaristocratic'.

aptness to produce pleasure and pain in us, wherein consists our

happiness and misery.'(77)

Coleridge's antagonism to this egoistic, 'Epicurean' morality

was explicit in an 1802 article in the Morning Post. His overt

target here, however, was not Locke, but the nominally republican

(yet seemingly imperial) government of Napoleonic France.

Coleridge had come to see the actions of the latter as

significantly influenced by the individualistic philosophies he

now opposed. In his article (also referred to in the previous

chapter, p. 120) he argued that there was a valuable lesson to

learn by comparing Napoleon's rule with that of the Roman

Caesars, and by placing in parallel the events that had led to

the demise of republicanism in both France and Rome.(78) Prior to

the breakdown of their republican institutions, Coleridge

maintained, both societies witnessed an expansion of commercial

activity accompanied by a flourishing of the arts and sciences.

These developments, however, had produced a decline in moral

standards and a growing disrespect for tradition and religion.

The resulting collapse of the republic in both states, therefore,


79 'Comparison of the present state of France with that of Rome underJulius and Augustus Caesar. I', ibid., p. 315. Prior to the declineof the Republic in the first century B.C., Epicurus's philosophy hadbecome influential in Rome through Lucretius. Long, HellenisticPhilosophy, pp. 13, 17-19.

80 See: Yolton, Thinking Matter, pp. 23, 33-45; idem, FrenchMaterialism, pp. 80-2, 173.

was driven 'by the commercial spirit'. But supporting the

advance of this 'commercial spirit', Coleridge contended, was an

'Epicurean' philosophy, which took human nature to be primarily

governed by a mechanistic tendency to seek pleasurable

sensations:(79)

Both in France and Rome the metaphysics and ethics ofEpicurus had become the fashionable philosophy among thewealthy and powerful; a philosophy which regards man as amere machine, a sort of living automaton, which teachesthat pleasure is the sole good, and a prudent calculationof enjoyment the only virtue.

Coleridge's analysis here of the failure of French and Roman

republicanism is important, because it reveals that he saw an

individualistic, 'commercial' morality as conducive to the kind

of social instability that characterized post-revolutionary

France and had led ultimately to Napoleon's dictatorship.

Implicit here was the message that, if one were not careful,

something similar could happen in Britain.

While Locke was not explicitly mentioned in this article, it

is clear that the 'Epicurean' philosophy Coleridge was attacking

was a Lockean one. Although Locke himself did not espouse the

idea of a man-machine, he was commonly seen as doing so by

eighteenth-century commentators.(80) Moreover, in his Essay Locke

had portrayed morality, along implicitly mechanistic lines, as a

function of our sensations of pleasure and pain. Lockeans such

as Gay and Hartley were similarly confident that human motivation

could be explained by a sensationalist psychology of pleasure and

pain. Gay, emulating Locke, held that the anticipation of these


81 Gay, Dissertation, p. xxii.

82 Hartley, Observations, vol. 1, p. 83. See also above, pp. 27, 28.

83 See Yolton, Locke and French Materialism, pp. 56, 171, 210.

84 See, for example: Sabine, Political Theory, pp. 560-7, 571-3; Welch,Liberty and Utility, pp. 9-11.

85 Condillac, Essay, pp. 8-9.

sensations constituted 'the principle of all action'.(81) Hartley

argued that all concepts, including virtue, could ultimately be

accounted for by the physical sensations that had led to their

formation. The more complex 'intellectual pleasures and pains',

he claimed, were 'nothing but the sensible ones variously mixed

and compounded together.'(82)

That Coleridge saw such a mechanistic, 'Lockean' philosophy

as widespread in republican France is not surprising. To begin

with, the idea of a man-machine had been notoriously promoted by

the physician and philosopher, Julien Offray de La Mettrie, whose

writings were linked with Locke.(83) Moreover, Locke's

sensationalist epistemology had been influential in France

throughout the eighteenth century and had contributed to the

climate of reform at the time of the Revolution.(84) This came

about most notably through the writings of Étienne Bonnot de

Condillac, who had promoted Locke's epistemology in France from

the middle of the century. In his 1746 Essay on the Origin of

Human Knowledge, for instance, Condillac wrote that while the

Aristotelians had maintained 'that all our knowledge is derived

from the senses ... Mr. Locke ... has the honour of being the

first to demonstrate it.'(85) In his Logic (1780), which became a

standard text in new educational institutions such as the École

Normale in the immediate post-revolutionary period, Condillac

asserted, in typically sensationalist fashion, that 'pleasure and

pain ... are our first teachers: they enlighten us because they

warn us whether we are judging well or badly; and that is why,


86 Albury, Introduction to Logic, pp. 26-7; Condillac, Logic, p. 55.See also Gillispie, Edge of Objectivity, pp. 165-72, 175-6.

87 D'Alembert, Preliminary Discourse, pp. 6, 10-13.

88 Helvétius, De l'esprit, p. 13. The analogy with physics is evidentin another passage where Helvétius wrote that 'the passions are tothe moral realm what movement is to physics. Just as movementcreates, annuls, preserves and animates everything (and without it,everything is dead) the passions similarly give life to the moralworld.' Ibid., p. 90. Albury indicates that the publication of Del'esprit caused an uproar in France, resulting in conclusivecensorship of the Encyclopédie. Albury, Introduction to Logic,p. 12.

without any other help, we make progress in childhood which seems

as rapid as it does astonishing.'(86)

A Lockean, sensationalist philosophy was pronounced in other

notable, eighteenth-century French works. For example, in the

'Preliminary Discourse' to the Encyclopédie (1751), Jean

d'Alembert argued for a thoroughly sensationalist epistemology

and ethics: 'all our direct knowledge can be reduced to what we

receive through our senses', he claimed, 'whence it follows that

we owe all our ideas to our sensations.' He went on to affirm

that moral knowledge too was entirely a product of experience.

Suffering at the hands of others, he maintained, was what led

people to conceive of principles of right and wrong and to

subsequently formulate laws to protect themselves.(87)

A more detailed application of sensationalism to ethics - for

the specific purpose of legislative reform - was attempted

slightly later by Claude-Adrien Helvétius who, in the preface to

his infamous De l'esprit (1758), declared that 'morality should

be treated like every other science and constructed like an

experimental physics.'(88) The foundation upon which Helvétius

proposed to establish his 'moral science' was sensationalist and

egoistic. He argued that 'pain and pleasure are the sole

mainsprings of the moral universe, and that the feeling of self-


89 Helvétius, De l'esprit, p. 78.

90 Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation, pp. 11, 34-5. Cf. thequotation from Helvétius above. On the influence of Helvétius onBentham, see Halévy, Philosophic Radicalism, pp. 18-21, 27, 82.

91 Paley, Principles, p. 18.

92 CN,1, entry 1713: December 1803.

love is the only basis upon which one might establish a useful

morality.'(89)

For Coleridge, such 'Epicureanism' was being dangerously

promoted in early nineteenth-century Britain in the guise of

utilitarian philosophies like those of Bentham and Paley.

Bentham's 1789 Introduction to the Principles of Morals and

Legislation was in fact directly inspired by Helvétius, and began

with the pronouncement that 'Nature has placed mankind under the

governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.' These

determinants of human conduct, Bentham maintained, were 'the only

things that can operate, as motives'. Accordingly, he adopted

Hartley's associationist psychology to argue that 'moral'

behaviour was produced by the anticipation of pleasure or pain in

the form of rewards or punishments.(90) Paley, similarly, in his

1785 Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, defined

happiness - the aim of virtuous action - in an unequivocally

utilitarian way, as 'any condition, in which the amount or

aggregate of pleasure exceeds that of pain'.(91) Such an

individualistic basis for morality was increasingly attacked by

Coleridge, as it conflicted with a traditional Christian belief

in a universal, divine source of moral knowledge. In a notebook

entry of 1803, for example, he berated 'Hartley, Priestley, & the

Multitude' for promulgating the utilitarian idea that virtue is

not innate, but learnt by external 'examples' or

'inducements'.(92)

That Coleridge was concerned about the political consequences

of such a sensationalist, utilitarian ethics is clear from a


93 'Letters on the Spaniards: Letter VII', The Courier, 22 December1809, CC,3, vol. 2, pp. 79-85.

94 Ibid., p. 82.

95 Ibid., pp. 79-80.

96 Coleridge gives no specific target for his criticism in his letter.It is clear, however, that he particularly had in mind members of theTory ministry, and other 'Peace-men'. See CC,3, vol. 1, pp. cxxxiv-cxli. Despite this, in his 'Table Talk' some years later hesuggested that it was the Whigs about whom he had been complaining,declaring that they were 'the absolute abettors of the invasion ofSpain, and did all in their power to thwart the efforts of [Britain]to resist it'. CC,14, vol. 1, p. 46: 27 April 1823, cited in Colmer,Critic of Society, p. 164.

later statement, published in an 1809 letter in The Courier, one

of the leading London newspapers.(93) This letter was one of a

series in which he defended the cause of Spanish sovereignty

against Napoleonic occupation, and urged the British government

to actively support Spain. The bulk of this particular letter,

however, was taken up with criticism of a utilitarian morality

based upon expediency. This morality, Coleridge claimed, was

being advocated by 'the disciples of Hume, Paley, and Condillac,

the parents or foster-fathers of modern ethics'.(94) He began by

arguing that such a 'calculating' morality was impracticable

because the consequences of any action could not all be foreseen,

and he maintained that moral behaviour ought to stem instead from

'moral instincts' or principles found within each person's

conscience.(95) His purpose, however, was not only to demonstrate

how an ethics of expediency affected the sphere of personal

morality, but, more importantly, to alert his readers to its

broader political consequences. One of the points he was making,

against those opposed to British intervention in Spain,(96) was

that the British government's actions ought to proceed from fixed

moral principles and not solely from a selfish consideration of

its own interests. At the same time, he wished to show that a

selfish morality was exemplified by Napoleon's conquering disdain

for the sovereignty of other nations. He went on to warn the

paper's readers that 'there is a natural affinity between


97 CC,3, vol. 2, p. 81.

98 On the social philosophy of the Epicureans, see Sabine, PoliticalTheory, pp. 132-6.

Despotism and modern Philosophy, notwithstanding the proud

pretensions of the latter as the emancipator of the human

race'.(97) Coleridge's message here, then, was clearly intended

for the utilitarian advocates of 'modern ethics' in Britain who,

on the grounds of selfish expediency, were opposing intervention

in Spain, and so indirectly encouraging tyranny. He was also

insinuating that, if the ruling classes were not attentive to the

kinds of 'modern Philosophy' that were gaining in popularity at

home, Britain might meet the same fate as France.

Interestingly, this hostility to an individualistic,

'Epicurean' morality places Coleridge in an ongoing controversy

in European philosophy that began some two thousand years

earlier, in a debate between the ancient Stoics and Epicureans

over the origin of moral knowledge. Although it is not

specifically alluded to by Coleridge, this debate is worth

mentioning, for its terms are very similar to those used by him

to contest Locke's 'new Epicurean School'. Indeed, not only are

some of Locke's views very close to those of the early

Epicureans, but Coleridge's own position is remarkably like that

of their Stoic opponents.

Anticipating Locke and his utilitarian followers, the

Epicureans had maintained that human actions are motivated

chiefly by self-interest, and that moral rules are purely

conventional.(98) Against such a view of morality the Stoics

claimed that moral standards are universal and made by consulting

an internal arbiter, perhaps divinely informed. This Stoic

position was articulated by the first-century B.C. Roman thinker,

Cicero, who explained that central to the Stoics' position was

the idea of a 'natural' law, governing what is right and wrong


99 Cited in Sabine, Political Theory, p. 164, taken from Cicero,Republic, III, 22, translated by Sabine and Smith.

100 Locke, Essays, pp. 122-35. See pp. 7-13 for information relating tothe dating of these 'Essays'.

101 Sabine notes that Locke's 'philosophy as a whole presented theanomaly of a theory of the mind which was in general empirical,joined with a theory of the sciences and a procedure in politicalscience which was rationalist.' Sabine, Political Theory, p. 530.

and overriding any conventional laws. This kind of law, Cicero

indicated, was(99)

a true law - namely, right reason - which is inaccordance with nature, applies to all men, and isunchangeable and eternal. By its commands this lawsummons men to the performance of their duties; by itsprohibitions it restrains them from doing wrong. ... Toinvalidate this law by human legislation is never morallyright, nor is it permissible ever to restrict itsoperation, and to annul it wholly is impossible. ... God... is the author of this law, its interpreter, and itssponsor.

Although Locke is commonly viewed as a defender of this

natural law tradition, the position expressed here by Cicero

comes very close to the innatism to which Locke and his followers

were apparently opposed. For the Lockeans claimed that truth

should be decided according to a common standard of rationality,

and not on the authority of tradition or an untestable, inward

conviction. In some unpublished 'Essays on the Law of Nature',

written in the early 1660s, Locke had in fact argued that

knowledge of natural law was neither innate nor sanctioned by

custom, but could only be obtained from sensation.(100) This

sensationalist position on natural law, however, was seemingly

reversed in his later political writings, where rights to life,

liberty and possessions were advanced as intrinsic to human

nature.(101) Such a discrepancy, however, appears not to have

been noticed by Locke's eighteenth- and nineteenth-century

enemies who viewed his attitude as unequivocally hostile to

innatism. To a large degree, this was because Locke's

utilitarian followers similarly tended to ignore the innatist


102 Ibid., p. 531.

103 See ibid., pp. 180-2.

104 Leibniz, New Essays, p. 92.

105 CC,9, p. 473. See Romans, 2:13-15.

tendency of his politics and stressed instead the empiricist

epistemology of the Essay which ran counter to it.(102)

While Coleridge did not explicitly appeal to the earlier

natural law tradition in his assaults on modern 'Epicureanism',

he clearly subscribed to the Stoic idea that a moral law was

universal and had been divinely implanted in every person.

Indeed, the Christian ethical tradition with which he

increasingly identified had embraced a very similar conception of

natural law to that of the Stoics.(103) This Christian version of

natural law was in fact invoked by Locke's opponent, Leibniz, in

his defence of the innateness of 'moral knowledge' in the New

Essays on Human Understanding. There, Leibniz argued that human

beings did not just possess 'instincts' to 'pursue joy and flee

sorrow', but had inborn knowledge 'of the natural law which,

according to St Paul, God has engraved in their minds.'(104) St

Paul's letter to the Romans, alluded to here by Leibniz, was

drawn upon later by the mature Coleridge to criticize

utilitarianism. In an annotation to a copy of his 1825 Aids to

Reflection, Coleridge argued that 'the Apostle's Argument ... in

the Epist. to the Romans, and to the Galatians, must appear mere

jargon to those who substitute ... the calculations of worldly

Prudence for the MORAL LAW.'(105)

Yet, despite the similarities between Coleridge's ethical

position and that of the ancient Stoics, he was adamantly opposed

to the natural law tradition in one of its most recent

incarnations as the Lockean doctrine of natural rights. This was

because he saw the latter as emphasizing individual rights at the

expense of social duties and responsibilities. For the


106 CC,4, vol. 2, p. 98.

conservative Coleridge, the Stoic conception of a moral 'law'

which 'summons men to the performance of their duties' would have

had little in common with Locke's individualistic natural rights.

III.7 The Distinction between the Reason and the Understanding

Criticism of the epistemological basis of individualistic

philosophies continued to be made throughout Coleridge's

writings. Such criticism was especially noticeable in his

periodical publication of 1809-10, The Friend. Here, in one

place, he took to task the political views of Hobbes and linked

them to a sensationalist psychology. Hobbes's system, he

claimed, obscured the distinction between rights and duties, and

debased human beings by 'affirming that the human mind consists

of nothing but manifold modifications of passive sensation'. In

Hobbes's sensationalist view of human behaviour, Coleridge

continued, people were portrayed as little better than animals,

ruled by sensations of fear.(106)

In this section of The Friend, Coleridge went on to make a

different criticism about a tendency in politics to view things

in an abstract quantitative way, akin to mathematics or geometry.

This criticism was remarkably similar to that made by Burke about

the adoption in politics of a uniformitarian approach, derived

from the sciences (see above, pp. 92-96). Like Burke, Coleridge

saw political uniformitarianism as dangerous, for it led to a

denial of diversity within and between nations.

Interestingly, Coleridge presented his criticism of political

uniformitarianism in terms of an epistemological confusion

between two mental faculties: the Reason and the Understanding.

While the terminology here was derived from Kant, Coleridge


107 Ibid., p. 104. Cf. CC,13, pp. 34-5, 66-70, 282-3. On thisdistinction, see Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 170-1, B 355-68, B391-2/ A 334-5, A 509/ B 537, A 546/ B 574, A 548/ B 576, A 567-8/ B595-6. Kant's distinction is presented as part of a purelyepistemological argument. However, we shall later see (pp. 218-20)that there was an important moral and political dimension to Kant'sseparation of the empirical 'understanding' (Verstand) from the apriori 'reason' (Vernunft).

108 The following summary is based on CC,4, vol. 2, pp. 125-33.

appropriated Kant's epistemological distinction for his own,

radically different, political ends. The Understanding,

Coleridge explained, is the faculty of the mind which organizes

the raw data of sense experience. The Reason, on the other hand,

functions independently of the world of the senses: through it,

the mind arrives at universal mathematical laws as well as

religious and moral truths.(107) The relationship between

Coleridge's Reason and Understanding, then, is very much like

that we observed in Plato's epistemology between a higher,

rational mode of knowing that provides access to eternal, innate

truths, and knowledge or 'opinion' of an inferior, temporal kind

that is acquired through sense experience. In view of what we

have already seen of Coleridge's partiality to Platonism, one

might expect him to have advocated a political framework in which

Reason is supreme. Instead, however, he claimed that while

Reason must be appealed to for direction on moral and religious

questions, its direct application is inappropriate in politics

where the Understanding has a central role. He illustrated this

point by outlining the political system of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

and the eighteenth-century French Physiocrats, who (he

maintained) had mistakenly invoked the Reason as the sole guide

for political conduct.

The system of these French theorists, Coleridge explained,

purports to take universal ideas of the Reason as its guiding

principles, but erroneously claims that these ideas are adequate

to regulating the conduct of human beings in society.(108) For in

politics (he argued) one must also take account of knowledge


109 Ibid., p. 131.

110 Coleman, Coleridge and The Friend, pp. 107-63.

obtained from experience, that is, of knowledge supplied through

the activity of the Understanding. If the Reason alone is

appealed to for guidance in political matters, the result will be

the construction of abstract political theories, having little

relevance to the diverse conditions under which each society's

institutions have developed. So, while the Reason is the source

of universal moral principles that ought to guide a person's

actions, it is unsuited for the worldly calculations involved in

the government of human societies. The Understanding, on the

other hand, concerns itself with the constantly varying

circumstances of the external world, and so should be used to

develop laws and institutions which conform, as far as possible,

with the moral demands of the Reason:(109)

that Reason should be our Guide and Governor is anundeniable Truth, and all our notion of Right and Wrongis built thereon ... yet still the proof is wanting, thatthe first and most general applications of the power ofMan can be definitely regulated by Reason unaided by thepositive and conventional Laws in the formation of whichthe Understanding must be our Guide, and which becomejust because they happen to be expedient.

Coleman has shown that in The Friend Coleridge was drawing

upon several thinkers he was reading at the time. The almost

Platonic dichotomy between an ideal private sphere of ethics and

its imperfect realization in social relations was prefigured in

the writings of the sixteenth-century divine, Richard Hooker, in

Kant, and, to a lesser extent, in Burke.(110) Coleridge enlisted

these thinkers, particularly in order to argue that there is

indeed a moral and religious equality of all human beings. Such

an egalitarian ideal, he asserted, was in fact one of the

distinguishing features of the Christian Church: all were equal

before Christ, and all were equally at liberty to use their

Reason to discover moral and religious laws. In an unpublished


111 CN,3, entry 3293: 1808/1818.


113 CC,4, vol. 2, p. 128.

114 Ibid., pp. 129-30.

commentary on the Decalogue(111) he maintained that the

obligations of the 'moral & rational Individual' implied a

'Universal Equality, King & Peasant'. However he believed that

it was wrong to transfer this idea of universal equality to

political life, as he alleged Rousseau and Rousseau's

revolutionary disciples had done: the religious and ethical

sphere pertaining to the 'moral & rational individual' was

different from the sphere in which a person is 'a citizen or

member of a State.' Burke, likewise, insisted that 'the true

moral equality of mankind' should not be confused with 'that real

inequality ... of civil life'.(112)

So, one of the main targets of Coleridge's criticism of the

misapplication of Reason in The Friend was the uniformitarian

doctrine of natural rights. Indeed, the fruits of this doctrine,

Coleridge warned, could be seen in France, in the forms of 'the

satanic Government of Horror under the Jacobins, and of Terror

under the Corsican [Napoleon].'(113) He in fact argued that the

misuse of the Reason in politics could lead to either democracy

or tyranny. For if one believed 'that no other Laws [are]

allowable but those ... of which every Man's Reason is the

competent judge, it is indifferent whether one Man, or one or

more Assemblies of men, give form and publicity to them.'(114)

While Burke did not spell out the epistemological dimension

of his own criticism of eighteenth-century natural rights, he

anticipated Coleridge by making a similar distinction between

rational and empirical knowledge. The reasoning capacity of

individuals, Burke asserted, could never grasp the complexity of

social institutions and their development. Individual 'reason'


115 Burke, Reflections, p. 84. Taking up the Burkean banner againstnatural rights, The Anti-Jacobin similarly contrasted individualreason with experience and tradition: 'In MORALS We are equally oldfashioned. We have yet to learn the modern refinement of referringin all considerations upon human conduct, not to any settled andpreconceived principles of right and wrong, not to any general andfundamental rules which experience, and wisdom, and justice, and thecommon consent of mankind have established, but to the internaladmonitions of every man's judgment or conscience in his ownparticular instance.' Anti-Jacobin, pp. 5-6.


could not hope to rise above the store of knowledge and wisdom

derived from the vast historical experience of a nation or

culture.(115)

We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on hisown private stock of reason; because we suspect that thisstock in each man is small, and that the individualswould do better to avail themselves of the general bankand capital of nations and of ages.

Moreover, the enduring political arrangements of a society, Burke

insisted, were rarely the product of abstract, rational theories,

but emerged from that society's concrete experiences.(116)

Old establishments are tried by their effects ... theyare the results of various necessities and expediences.They are not often constructed after any theory; theoriesare rather drawn from them. ... The means taught byexperience may be better suited to political ends thanthose contrived in the original project.

In Chapter II, we saw that Burke condemned what he saw as the

mathematical or geometrical character of natural rights theories.

This was echoed in The Friend by Coleridge who maintained that

the uniformitarian 'Rights of Man' doctrines that Rousseau's

philosophy sanctioned were a consequence of trying to provide a

framework for politics 'analogous ... to Geometry'. The problem

with such an approach, Coleridge explained, is that 'Geometry

holds forth an Ideal, which can never be fully realized in

Nature, ... because it is Nature: because Bodies are more than

Extension, and to pure extension of space only the mathematical


117 CC,4, vol. 2, pp. 128-9, 132. The view expressed here that 'Bodiesare more than Extension' is a good example of the mature Coleridge's'dynamic' view of matter, canvassed in the following chapter.

118 Ibid., pp. 127-8, 105.

119 On Physiocracy, see: Winch, 'Emergence of Economics', pp. 524-7;Rubin, Economic Thought, pp. 101-10.

Theorems wholly correspond.'(117) Coleridge followed Burke in

arguing that 'expediency' or 'prudence' is necessary to effect a

compromise between the theoretical ideals of the Reason and the

changing circumstances of nations, and he criticized Rousseau for

putting forward a system which neglected the diversity of

societies. 'A Constitution equally suited to China and America,

or to Russia and Great Britain,' he maintained, 'must surely be

equally unfit for both'.(118)

The other important example of the misapplication of the

Reason in politics, Coleridge argued, was found in the theories

of the French Physiocrats in the latter part of the eighteenth

century. He objected to these theories for being too abstract,

without any empirical foundation. Physiocracy meant government

('cracy') according to laws of nature ('phusis'), by which its

proponents understood that the most reasonable way of dealing

with a country's economy was to allow it to spontaneously find

its own 'natural' equilibrium. During the ancien régime in

France, the Physiocrats recommended agricultural reforms

entailing a significant reduction in state control. The famous

motto of 'laissez faire, laissez passer' in fact originated with

them. In order to achieve their economic aims, the Physiocrats

also advocated a 'legal despotism' - the co-operation of an

'enlightened' ruler against an aristocracy and clergy who tended

to refuse to laissez passer, in order to protect their feudal

privileges.(119) It is understandable, therefore, that Coleridge

discovered a connection between Physiocratic principles and

Napoleon's 'despotic' rule. Indeed, the French Emperor's claims


120 CC,4, vol. 2, p. 130. Coleridge was, however, wrong in hisassumption that Physiocracy found favour under Napoleon. For thespeculative economics of the Physiocrats and their successors, theIdéologues, were strongly criticized by the French emperor. See:Welch, Liberty and Utility, pp. 9-10, 38-41, 70-1; Bruun, FrenchImperium, pp. 210-11.

121 CC,4, vol. 2, pp. 130-1.

to authority, Coleridge asserted, found a perfect vindication in

the Physiocrats' 'mathematical' philosophy, which took 'REASON

[to be] the sole Sovereign, the only rightful Legislator; but

Reason to act on Man must be impersonated ... [so] Providence ...

had marked HIM out for the Representative of Reason'.(120) So,

just as claims had falsely been made for natural rights on the

basis of intuitive knowledge of such rights, Coleridge believed

that a similar epistemological error was behind the claims of the

Physiocrats and Napoleon. In particular, he complained about the

Physiocratic philosophy of laissez-faire with which he claimed

Napoleon's regime operated, and which he implied was also based

on a mistaken presumption that society operates according to

abstract principles, known via the Reason. He summarized this

philosophy in the following way:(121)

the greatest possible Happiness of a People is ... topreserve the Freedom of all by coercing within therequisite bounds the Freedom of each. Whatever aGovernment does more than this, comes of Evil: and its'best employment is the repeal of Laws and Regulations,not the Establishment of them. ... Remove all theinterferences of positive Statutes, all Monopoly, allBounties, all Prohibitions ... let the Revenues of theState be taken at once from the Produce of the Soil; andall things will then find their level, all irregularitieswill correct each other, and an indestructible Cycle ofharmonious motions take place in the moral, equally as inthe natural World.

Significantly, the link alleged by Coleridge in The Friend

between Rousseau's political uniformitarianism and French

laissez-faire economics reflected his criticisms of the

philosophy that he saw as sustaining a 'commercial G. Britain'.

He in fact acknowledged in his periodical that one of the reasons


122 Ibid., p. 110.

123 Ibid., pp. 132-7.

124 Coleman, Coleridge and The Friend, pp. 125-31.

for his assault on 'the French Code of revolutionary Principles'

was that he found examples of it 'every where in the speeches,

and writings, of the English reformers, [and] not seldom in those

of their Opponents'.(122) His condemnation of Rousseau and the

Physiocrats, then, was clearly an indirect way of taking to task

the British reform movement. Indeed, he went on in The Friend to

criticize the prominent advocate in Britain of universal male

suffrage, Major John Cartwright.(123) On the whole, though,

Coleridge's overt criticism of British reformers was fairly

reserved. Coleman has suggested that this was because his real

targets were the middle-class Dissenters whom he could not openly

censure, partly because they made up a significant portion of his

periodical's subscription base, and also because many were or had

been his friends, although he disapproved of their politics.(124)

One can understand, then, why he would have chosen to attack

their ideas obliquely, through the French theorists.

III.8 The 'Lay Sermons'

In subsequent works, Coleridge continued to insist that the

distinction between the Reason and the Understanding was as

crucial in politics as it was in ethics. The problem in both

spheres lay in the misapplication of these faculties. While the

Understanding's usurpation of the moral and religious function of

the Reason had resulted in a utilitarian ethics of expediency, a

spurious appeal to the Reason in politics had led to Jacobinical

proclamations of inherent, political rights and the Physiocratic,

economic principle of laissez-faire. In his writings after 1815,

however, Coleridge increasingly blamed the social problems of the


125 CC,6, p. 28.

126 Ibid., pp. 28-32.

127 Ibid., pp. 33-4.

age on the moral misuse of the worldly, sense-constrained

Understanding. What is important to note here is that he now

explicitly attributed this misuse to the ascendancy of a

prevailing mechanistic philosophy.

In the 1816 Statesman's Manual; or the Bible the Best Guide

to Political Skill and Foresight: A Lay Sermon, Addressed to the

Higher Classes of Society, Coleridge examined some of the

philosophical and social consequences of the mechanical

philosophy and its epistemology. He warned his targetted elite

audience that 'the histories and political economy of the present

and preceding century partake in the general contagion of its

mechanic philosophy, and are the product of an unenlivened

generalising Understanding.'(125) At this point in his book,

Coleridge contrasted the history described in the Bible with more

recent histories such as that of Hume. He claimed that what

particularly distinguished these two kinds of history was that

the Bible provided an account of the spiritual meaning of a

nation's development, while modern histories merely described and

categorized events without revealing their underlying religious

or spiritual purpose. So, in a sense, the Bible exemplified for

Coleridge a Platonic concern for the spiritual basis of the

phenomenal world. The secular emphasis of more recent historical

writing, he went on, was characteristic of a modern tendency to

deny the moral and religious function of a faculty of Reason and

to attempt to deduce morality from the sense-based Understanding

alone.(126) He insisted that there were dangerous, unforseen

results of this tendency, aptly demonstrated by the French

Revolution, of which the causes could be found in:(127)


128 Ibid., pp. 73-4.

the rising importance of the commercial and manufacturingclass, and its incompatibility with the old feudalprivileges and prescriptions; ... the predominance of apresumptuous and irreligious philosophy; ... the extremeover-rating of the knowledge and power given by theimprovements of the arts and sciences, especially thoseof astronomy, mechanics, and a wonder-working chemistry;... the general conceit that states and governments mightbe and ought to be constructed as machines, everymovement of which might be foreseen and taken intoprevious calculation ... .

Though Coleridge's ostensible target here was eighteenth-

century France, his message was plainly once again intended for

his compatriots. For this description of pre-revolutionary

French society matched the characteristics of the 'commercial G.

Britain' which he opposed. Both societies, for Coleridge, were

increasingly secular ones, imbued with utilitarian values that

had been fostered by the mechanical philosophy and its

sensationalist epistemology. So, there was clearly a warning

here for the 'higher classes' in Britain: if the epistemological

and moral consequences of the mechanical philosophy were not

recognized, the country was in danger of finding itself the

victim of social upheavals like those that had occurred in France

after the Revolution.

In The Statesman's Manual Coleridge offered a history of the

Understanding's arrogation of the moral and religious function of

the Reason. The process began in medieval France, he explained,

and was intensified toward the end of the fourteenth century,

with the emergence of 'the commercial spirit and the ascendancy

of the experimental philosophy'.(128) Eventually,

dazzled by the real or supposed discoveries, which it hadmade, the more the understanding was enriched, the moredid it become debased; till science itself put on aselfish and sensual character, and immediate utility ...was imposed as the test of all intellectual powers andpursuits.


129 Ibid., pp. 75-6.

While Coleridge mentioned no names or events, this passage was

obviously alluding to the seventeenth-century scientific

revolution. It is not at all clear, however, to what exactly he

was referring in the earlier medieval period. One might infer

that his anti-gallic sentiments and a concern for genealogical

consistency prompted him to find the source of the

Understanding's usurpation of moral and religious knowledge in

France. For he went on to argue that this illegitimate

employment of the Understanding had reached its zenith in the

French Enlightenment. It was by the efforts of the eighteenth-

century, French 'Encyclopaedists' and their followers, he

claimed, 'that the Human Understanding ... was tempted to throw

off all show of reverence to the spiritual and even to the moral

powers and impulses of the soul'. Subsequently, one could find

widespread evidence of the encroachment of 'this French wisdom'

in 'political economy', in a sensationalist 'ethical philosophy'

and in a reductionistic 'chemical art'.(129)

But it was not really the moral misuse of the Understanding

in a nation recently defeated that mattered here for Coleridge.

For the aim of The Statesman's Manual was to demonstrate to the

British ruling classes the ways in which 'this French wisdom' was

affecting politics at home. France was in many ways a convenient

scapegoat for Coleridge. For not only did its recent history

provide a terrifying illustration of his claims. It also allowed

him to indirectly vent his concerns about the effects of

Newtonianism in Britain without appearing unpatriotic. What he

wanted to get across to the British ruling elite was that a

seemingly innocuous natural philosophy was having a profound,

though unnoticed, influence on domestic politics. The effects of

this philosophy were plain in France, but Britain had been spared

such excesses. Why? His country's saving grace so far,


130 Ibid., pp. 108-9.

131 See Gascoigne, Cambridge, pp. 140, 243.

132 CC,6, p. 110.

Coleridge maintained, was its constitution, which preserved a

balance between the diverse interests of the realm. Without such

a 'providential counterpoise', he argued, Britain's recent

history could have been quite different, perhaps similar to that

of France. For, like the French, the British had embraced 'that

system of disguised and decorous epicureanism, which has been the

only orthodox philosophy of the last hundred years'. Coleridge

was again alluding to Locke's philosophy, and he once more

outlined the reasons for its rise to prominence in Britain (see

above, pp. 136-140). In particular, he again accused it of

deceptively appearing to reconcile religion with the new

mechanistic science. Locke, he complained, had gravely misled

everyone by 'ingeniously threading-on the dried and shrivelled,

yet still wholesome and nutritious fruits, plucked from the rich

grafts of ancient wisdom, to the barren and worse than barren fig

tree of the mechanic philosophy.'(130)

Thus, one of the main points Coleridge was trying to get

across to his elite readership was that, despite popular

perceptions, the empiricist epistemology widely adhered to in

Britain was undermining the foundations of religion and morality.

This was especially apparent, he warned, in Paley's philosophy,

which, along with that of Locke, was becoming increasingly

fashionable in the early nineteenth century. Indeed, the works

of both thinkers were staples in the curriculum at Cambridge.(131)

Alluding to Paley, Coleridge grumbled that 'the principles ... of

taste, morals, and religion taught in our most popular compendia

of moral and political philosophy, natural theology, evidences of

Christianity, &c. are false, injurious, and debasing.'(132) What,

then, was to be done to resist these harmful influences? As the


133 Ibid., pp. 101-3, 107, 111.

title of Coleridge's work suggested, it was in religion that one

could find the sorts of principles upon which the affairs of the

nation ought to be conducted. But the Christian Bible was not

the sole source of 'ancient wisdom' that statesmen should

consult. A similar kind of wisdom, he claimed, could be located

in more recent schools of thought that had been denigrated by

modern 'Epicureans' such as Locke. Here Coleridge referred his

readers to Platonists and Neoplatonists of the Italian and

British Renaissance, medieval schoolmen and seventeenth-century

republicans and divines. The spiritual emphasis in the views of

such thinkers, he argued, provided a political antidote to the

erroneous opinions of those who 'assume, with Mr. Locke, that the

Mind contains only the reliques of the Senses, and therefore

proceed with him to explain the substance from the

shadow ...'.(133)

In a second 'lay sermon', published in 1817, and entitled A

Lay Sermon, Addressed to the Higher and Middle Classes, on the

Existing Distresses and Discontents, Coleridge spelt out much

more clearly some of the immediate dangers of the mechanical

philosophy and its sensationalist epistemology.

The 'Distresses and Discontents' referred to in the title

were the socio-economic problems faced by Britain following the

Napoleonic wars. Peace had not brought expected prosperity and

much of the population was unemployed and experiencing economic

hardship. Consequently, the political situation was unstable,

and Coleridge saw a potential danger. For the poor were being

prevailed upon to protest their condition by radical reformers

like William Cobbett and Henry Hunt. These men argued that the

principal cause of the nation's present economic adversity was

corruption, particularly the squandering of wealth in government

sinecures, and they urged the working classes to publicly


134 Ibid., pp. 141-2, 152-3n.5, 163-4n.7. On the background to the post-war disturbances about which Coleridge and others were anxious see,for example: Halévy, Liberal Awakening, pp. 3-22; Thompson, EnglishWorking Class, pp. 660-1, 673-83, 693-700.

135 CC,6, pp. 142-68.

136 Ibid., pp. 169-70.

137 Ibid., pp. 194, 172-3, 170.

remonstrate against such practices.(134) In his Lay Sermon,

Coleridge complained about these 'political empirics' and

'demagogues' whom he saw as inciting violence.(135) One of the

messages here, then, to 'the Higher and Middle Classes' was that

they needed to be wary of what was happening in the ranks of the

working classes.

This, however, was not his only message. For he went on to

explain what he believed was the fundamental cause of the

nation's current troubles. These troubles, he argued, were

fundamentally attributable to an 'OVERBALANCE OF THE COMMERCIAL

SPIRIT' in the nation - a state of affairs which could be put

down to a growing deficiency in the traditional 'COUNTERWEIGHTS'.

The first of these 'natural counter-forces' was 'the ancient

feeling of rank and ancestry'. Coleridge admitted that this had

not always had positive consequences, but maintained that such a

sentiment had nonetheless counteracted mercenary social

tendencies.(136) A second stabilizing force in the past, he

claimed, had existed in the form of 'a genuine intellectual

Philosophy with an accredited, learned, and philosophic Class'.

As an example of this, he once again pointed to the Renaissance,

where politicians and rulers, he indicated, had taken a keen

interest in the Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophies of the

times. Real 'Philosophy', however, had soon been forgotten, due

to 'the usurpation of that venerable name by physical and

psychological Empiricism'.(137)


138 Ibid., pp. 174-91.

139 Ibid., p. 181.

140 Ibid., p. 191.

A third 'counterweight' to the dominance of commercial

interests in Britain had been religion.(138) Although

Christianity still played a role in the nation's life, Coleridge

warned that influential sects within this religion were

undermining its effectiveness as a bulwark against the sway of

selfish, commercial interests. He singled out two sects in

particular that he felt were abetting commerce by not giving

sufficient importance to Christian doctrine: the Unitarians and

the Quakers. The Unitarians, he argued, were clearly in

complicity with 'the spirit of trade', a fact that was confirmed

by the appeal of this sect among educated people 'in our cities

and great manufacturing and commercial towns'.(139) The Quakers'

case, however, was not so clear cut, as there was much to be

commended in their spirituality and moral example. Nevertheless,

their links with commerce were similarly apparent, and Coleridge

inferred that they were among those 'Christian Mammonists' moving

like a train of 'camels heavily laden, yet all at full speed, and

each in the confident expectation of passing through the EYE OF

THE NEEDLE'.(140)

Interestingly, the 1817 Lay Sermon presented a position that

was very similar to that we noted in Coleridge's writings in the

mid-1790s. For one of his major concerns then had been to expose

both the religious hypocrisy of those in power and the atheistic

radicalism of his peers, and to insist that a morality and

religion sustained by an immaterialistic natural philosophy was

essential for social stability. This concern was still evident

in 1817. Now, however, the middle classes were an increasingly

important force in government and they needed to be warned that

their individualistic ideology - grounded in an empiricist


141 Holmes, Darker Reflections, pp. 440-2, 446-9.

142 CC,6, p. 42, cited in Holmes, Darker Reflections, p. 441.

philosophy - undermined the spiritual principles that were the

best defence against the social disintegration threatened by the

radicals and their working-class following.

It is important to observe that Coleridge's political

position at this time was perceived as an ambivalent one, with

its criticisms of both right and left factions of British

politics. Holmes has observed this too, noting that the 'lay

sermons' were viewed with suspicion by radicals and Tories alike.

For, although the terms of Coleridge's politics were conservative

in the emphasis placed on duties as opposed to rights, he also

explicitly took to task the ruling classes for putting their own

interests first and neglecting their social responsibilities.(141)

This ambivalence is evident in a passage from The Statesman's

Manual, in which Coleridge suggested that the future rulers of

Britain required a new moral education in order to better guide

those under them.(142)

I am greatly deceived, if one preliminary to an efficienteducation of the labouring classes be not ... a thoroughre-casting of the mould, in which the minds of ourGentry, the characters of our future Land-owners,Magistrates and Senators, are to receive their shape andfashion.

III.9 The Mechanical State

The political insecurity of the times for Coleridge thus

derived from a philosophy of self-interest which, he repeatedly

insisted, stemmed from Locke and seventeenth-century mechanical

philosophy. This link between mechanism and commercial self-

interest, Coleridge maintained, could be seen clearly in the

thought of early nineteenth-century British political economists

such as Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo, who were inspired by


143 On the connection between the Physiocrats and the British politicaleconomists, see Welch, Liberty and Utility, pp. 70-3.

144 CC,6, pp. 202-5. On the connection between self-regulating machinesand liberalism, see Mayr, Authority, Liberty & Automatic Machinery,pp. 164-80. Mayr's work is discussed below.

145 CC,6, pp. 206-8.

Adam Smith. Above (p. 174) we saw Coleridge complaining (in The

Statesman's Manual) that the historiography and political economy

of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had been affected by

'the general contagion of ... mechanic philosophy'. We also saw

that he went on to argue that one of the causes of the French

Revolution was a view that states ought to function in a

predictable, mechanical fashion, that they were 'constructed as

machines'. This (we saw) was most probably an allusion to the

Physiocrats. These French economists recommended leaving the

well-constructed machinery of states alone, so that the economy

could find a 'natural' balance.(143) In the 1817 Lay Sermon, the

British political economists met with similar criticisms. Their

mechanical conception of society, Coleridge asserted, was

conducive to a belief that the 'periodical Revolutions of Credit'

which were largely responsible for the nation's problems, were

'so much superfluous steam ejected by the Escape Pipes and Safety

Valves of a self-regulating Machine: and ... that in a free and

trading country all things find their level.'(144) Coleridge

protested that this notion of a self-regulating economy demeaned

human beings, and he condemned the treatment of workers as

objects in the economists' factory model of society. 'But

Persons are not Things', he objected, 'but Man does not find his

level'.(145)

This last objection was one of Coleridge's few allusions to

Adam Smith. In his famous Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of

the Wealth of Nations (1776), Smith had used the image of a

stream of water naturally coming to a level to promote the

benefits of unrestricted trade between countries. He cited the


146 Smith, Wealth of Nations, vol. 1, pp. 510-13. Cf. the example fromHume, p. 193 below.

147 'Monopolists and Farmers, Letter V', Morning Post, 14 October 1800,CC,3, vol. 1, p. 255. For Coleridge on Smith, see also: CN,1, entry735: May-June 1800; CL,2, p. 799: to Thomas Poole, 7 May 1802; CN,3,entry 3565: July-September 1809; and the April Fools Day article, 'AModest Proposal for Abolishing the Church of England', Courier,1 April 1812, CC,3, vol. 2, p. 346. In this article, Coleridgeironically wrote, 'A free trade and a free religion are my maxims.The one Adam Smith taught me; the other Voltaire.'

examples of Spain and Portugal, where there were stringent taxes

and prohibitions on the exportation of gold and silver. Smith

argued that the resulting abundance of gold and silver in these

countries had led to price inflation and a lull in economic

production. Moreover, this abundance served to increase the

value of these metals elsewhere, thus giving an additional trade

advantage to other countries. Smith claimed that, by abolishing

the export restrictions on gold and silver - thus opening 'the

flood-gates' - these precious metals would flow into other

countries until the 'stream' reached a 'level'. The benefits of

such a policy to Spain and Portugal, he maintained, would be

lower prices due to the lower value of gold and silver, which in

turn would encourage greater productivity and strengthen the

economy.(146) In an 1800 essay in the Morning Post, Coleridge

berated Smith's mechanical view of economics, declaring that

'Adam Smith's level' was(147)

one of those hard-hearted comparisons of human actionswith the laws of inanimate nature. Water will come to alevel without pain or pleasure, and provisions of moneywill come to a level likewise; but, O God! what scenes ofanguish must take place while they are coming to a level!

Coleridge was familiar also with the writings of Malthus and

Ricardo, though did not have much to say about them either. But

what he did say is informative. In 1804, he annotated several

passages in the second (1803) edition of Malthus's Essay on the

Principle of Population, claiming that the whole work was an

unnecessary illustration of the obvious fact - 'that Population


148 CC,12, vol. 3, pp. 805-10: 9-11 January 1804. For other referencesto Malthus, see also: CN,1, entry 1832: January 1804; CL,2,pp. 1026-7: to Robert Southey, 11 January 1804; CN,2, entry 3104:1807; CN,3, entry 3560: July-September 1809; CN,3, entry 3590:August-September 1809; CN,3, entry 4183: 1813-1815; CL,4, p. 554: toR. H. Brabant, 13 March 1815.

149 CN,3, entry 3590: August-September 1809.

150 CL,5, p. 442: to John Taylor Coleridge, 8 May 1825. Cf. CC,14,vol. 1, pp. 348-9: 9 March 1833. For Coleridge on Ricardo see also:CN,4, entry 5330: February 1826; CL,6, p. 820: to William Blackwood,20 October 1829.

151 See Sabine, Political Theory, pp. 686-93.

unrestrained would infinitely outrun Food' - and he condemned

Malthus's depiction of sex as an uncontrollable physical

need.(148) Coleridge was appalled by what he saw as the

economists' compassionless view of human beings, and lamented the

growing tendency of 'Statesmen & Legislatures to disregard the

opinions of wise & learned men' in favour of 'a Malthus, or an

Adam Smith'.(149) The increasing popularity of the economists was

unmerited, Coleridge maintained, for what little there was of

value in their thought boiled down to common sense, so did not

deserve much attention.(150)

In my Conviction the whole pretended Science [ofPolitical Economy] is but a Humbug. I have attentivelyread not only Sir James Stewart [Steuart] & Adam Smith;but Malthus, and Ricardo - and found a multitude ofSophisms but not a single just and important Result whichmight [not] far more convincingly be deduced from thesimplest principles of Morality and Common Sense ... .

Underlying such complaints about the increasing authority of

political economy was a more serious one. For the economists

were promoting the interests of the new mercantile classes of a

'commercial G. Britain'.(151) Coleridge was clearly opposed to

this commercial politics based on self-interest, and saw evidence

for it in the economists' mercenary view of human beings as the

instruments of blind market forces.


152 See: 'Pamplets on Children's Labour', CC,11, vol. 1, pp. 714-51;Holmes, Darker Reflections, pp. 474-8, and above, pp. 113, 114. Seealso Coleridge's ironic letter to the editor of The Courier on childlabour in cotton factories, in CC,3, vol. 2, pp. 484-9: 31 March1818.

His continuing opposition to what he saw as the political

economists' impersonal, mechanistic ideology is illustrated by

his active support in 1818 for Robert Peel's efforts to pass a

bill through Parliament limiting the age and hours of child

labour in factories. Coleridge circulated two pamphlets urging

M.P.s to support the bill, but, as expected, it was initially

rejected only to be passed in a watered-down form the following

year. As Holmes notes, Coleridge's complaints about the

exploitation of children by the wealthy industrialists distinctly

resemble earlier ones of the 1790s when the young poet-journalist

condemned his government's heartless disregard of the slave

trade.(152) This again demonstrates the consistency in

Coleridge's hostility to politics driven principally by

commercial considerations.

Another thing he found particularly problematical in the

political economists' mechanical model was that it sanctioned

revolution, by portraying the state as something artificial,

without any intrinsic unity. We shall later see that his own

view of the state was conceived on the model of an organism. An

organism has an intrinsic coherence and purpose that is lacking

in a machine. An organic state is thus one in which the

institutions are seen as maturing over time, and in which every

individual part has a role to fulfil in the general life of the

whole. In a mechanical state, on the other hand, there is no

inherent purpose and interconnection of parts. In such a state,

the individuals have no vital connection with the whole, and the

form of the whole seems arbitrary. For Coleridge, this

artificial kind of state was reflected in the views of the

political economists, and was dangerous. For a state modelled on


153 'To Mr. Justice Fletcher. Letter IV', Courier, 2 November 1814, CC,3,vol. 2, pp. 394, 392-3. On the background to Coleridge's letters toJustice Fletcher, see Colmer, Critic of Society, pp. 125-7.

154 CC,3, vol. 2, pp. 393-4.

machinery might readily be dismantled and reconstituted. This

danger was plainly conveyed in an 1814 letter by Coleridge to the

Courier. There he attacked the egoistic, mechanistic philosophy

of 'the doctors and disciples of political economy, with whom

"the Wealth of Nations" is of higher authority than either Bible

or Statute Book.' He also issued a warning about 'Jacobinism, as

it is now reshaping itself in England'. There had recently been,

he observed, a proliferation of 'numberless societies and

combinations of the mechanics and lower craftsmen of every

description ... [in] unchartered guilds ... for the sworn purpose

of Lording it over their employers and the public'.(153) The

hierarchical social order favoured by the mature Coleridge was

very much under threat from what he maintained was(154)

the most intensely jacobinical phaenomenon that has everappeared in Great Britain ... inasmuch as it dislocatesand unjoints the ordained and beneficent interdependenceof the higher, middle and lower ranks, destroying ordistempering the moral feelings and principles that arethe natural growth of these relations ... .

For Coleridge, the mechanical 'dislocating' and 'unjointing'

of an 'ordained' and 'natural' social order was a pressing reason

why public attention had to be drawn to the subtle political uses

of mechanistic philosophy. But, for those who missed the

connections in his sometimes long-winded arguments, he also

offered succinct chronologies of the process by which social

disintegration had been advanced by the mechanical philosophy.

One of these chronologies is found in Coleridge's re-worked, 1818

edition of The Friend. Here, in a 'brief history of the last 130

Years, by a lover of Old England', he pointed out the links


155 CC,4, vol. 1, pp. 446-7.

156 Ibid., p. 447.

157 Coleridge drew a famous distinction between the faculties of 'fancy'and 'imagination' in artistic creation. For Coleridge, the fancy isthe faculty of the mind that combines images passively received bythe senses. The imagination, on the other hand, actively transformsthe data of experience into meaningful wholes. See CC,7, vol. 1,pp. 82-8, 105, 293-4, 304-5. On this distinction in Coleridge andits sources in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century English andGerman thought, see Engell, Creative Imagination, pp. 119-22, 172-83.

between mechanism and revolutionary natural rights theories.(155)

The crucial event, he maintained, was the 1688 Glorious

Revolution, alongside which the 'Mechanical Philosophy' had been

portrayed 'as a kindred revolution in philosophy, and espoused,

as a common cause, by the partizans of the revolution in the

state.' Although Locke was not explicitly mentioned, this was an

obvious allusion to the thinker who was so widely seen as the

philosophical apologist for the 1688 Revolution. In the

continuation of his 'brief history', Coleridge enumerated the

consequences of these twin revolutions:(156)

a system of natural rights instead of social andhereditary privileges ... Imagination excluded frompoesy; and fancy [=sensation](157) paramount in physics;the eclipse of the ideal by the mere shadow of thesensible ... the wealth of nations [taken] for the well-being of nations ... Anglo-mania in France; followed byrevolution in America ... FRENCH REVOLUTION!

Whether or not such a 'brief history' was intelligible to

Coleridge's readers, it was clearly meant to persuade them of the

current political dangers inherent in the ascendant mechanistic

philosophy. Moreover, it contained the warning that Locke's

individualistic 'Epicureanism' was not as innocuous as it seemed.

It had already led to revolution on the continent, so what would

stop it from having similar effects back home? One had to look

carefully, then, at current liberal and utilitarian ideologies

which also had their paternity in Locke, and drew their

conceptions from the mechanical philosophy.


158 CL,4, p. 758: to Lord Liverpool, 28 July 1817.

159 Ibid., p. 759.

With this in mind, Coleridge in 1817 wrote to enlighten the

Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool. His letter began with a brief

account of the progress of seventeenth and eighteenth-century

mechanical philosophy. This account is telling, because it shows

that Coleridge saw the progress of this philosophy as definitely

hinging upon, as well as influencing, politics. Mechanism, he

explained to the Prime Minister, had been officially endorsed

through the establishment of the Royal Society under Charles II.

Its future success was then guaranteed by the victory of the

Protestant faction of Shaftesbury, Locke's mentor, over the

Royalist 'Pagans & Papists' in the Glorious Revolution. The

revolutionary destiny of this philosophy was further apparent in

its subsequent appropriation by 'the Anti-christians on the

continent' - the French Encyclopaedists and their Jacobin

successors.(158) Once again, Coleridge was alluding to the

development of eighteenth-century natural rights theories, and

overtly treating them as a consequence of the mechanical

philosophy. He allowed that some might find it implausible that

a philosophy which describes the world in terms of atoms and

subtle fluids could have social repercussions. They would be

wrong, he urged the Prime Minister, for the 'whole tone of

Manners and Feeling' of a society, he maintained, is expressed in

its metaphysics:(159)

the Taste and Character ... and above all the Religious... and the Political tendencies of the public mind,[bear] such a close correspondence, so distinct andevident an Analogy to the predominant system ofspeculative Philosophy ... as must remain inexplicable,unless we admit not only a reaction and interdependenceon both sides, but a powerful, tho' most often indirectinfluence of the latter on all the former.

Coleridge proceeded to explain the influence of 'the Physics

& Physiology of the age' on art, religion and politics


160 Ibid.

161 Ibid., pp. 759-60.

respectively. The 'long line of correspondencies' between

'speculative Philosophy' and the arts, he argued, shows that 'the

coincidence is far too regular to be resolved into mere

accident.' Thus, medieval 'reliefless surfaces, imprison'd in

their wiry outlines, as so many Definitions personified' showed a

clear affinity with Scholasticism. Renaissance Platonism was

reflected in the art of Giotto, Raphael and Titian; and the

sentiments of 'the common-sense and mechanic Philosophy' could be

found in the art of eighteenth-century 'layers-on of "inveterate

likenesses", and marble periwig-makers'.(160) Here again

Coleridge was alluding to the Neo-classical aesthetics that he

and other Romantics saw Locke's empiricist philosophy as

supporting (see above, p. 146).

He then drew His Lordship's attention to the social

repercussions of the mechanical philosophy's subversion of

religion, for 'religion ... is at all times the centre of Gravity

... with and through which Philosophy acts on the community in

general'. He took issue with the Deists' non-interventionist,

'clock-work-maker' God, and reiterated his frequently expressed

view that, in the eighteenth century, divine agency had been

usurped by gravity and a material aether. He blamed the

continuation of such notions on the mechanistic philosophy then

current, and once more insisted that natural philosophy has a

profound influence on society. 'The almost unanimous acceptance

of Dalton's Theory in England, & Le Sage's in France,' he

contended, 'determine the intellectual character of the age with

the force of an experimentum crucis.'(161)

But the pith of Coleridge's message concerned the influence

of the mechanical philosophy on politics. This influence was not

difficult to discern, he indicated, for this philosophy's


162 Ibid., p. 761.

fundamental concepts were conspicuous in recent social

philosophies. For instance, a tendency to view natural processes

mechanistically had encouraged a parallel view of history that

denied the organic continuity and development of social

institutions: 'with the Moderns, ... nothing grows; all is made'.

This mechanistic conception of society, he explained, had led to

a belief that ties with the past were unimportant, and so

provided a dangerous rationale for revolution. Once again, he

had in mind Locke and eighteenth-century natural rights theorists

whom he saw as overtly adopting a mechanistic model.(162)

Can it then be the result of accident, that the PoliticalDogmata, the principles of which are notoriously affirm'dand supported in the writings of Locke, that the'Perilous stuff' that still weighs on the heart ofEurope, and from which all the dire antidotes of the lateRevolution have not yet 'cleans'd the foul bosom' ... isit mere chance, that these need only borrow a few termsfrom the mechanic philosophy to become a fac-simile ofits doctrines.

A conceptual correlation between the mechanical philosophy

and liberal politics was also evident, Coleridge complained, in a

social application of atomism. The system of the mechanists, he

indicated, posits a world constituted by atomistic particles,

whose properties and means of combination are not explained.

Locke and others, similarly, he argued, had advocated a political

theory that depicts individuals as disconnected, atomistic units,

whose only security is provided by a fictitious 'contract' that

can be broken at will. The consequences of this theory,

Coleridge claimed, were social disunity and lawlessness, for in

such a system 'an Atom ... by the pure Attribute of his atomy has

an equal right with all other Atoms to be constituent & Demiurgic

on all occasions.' He went on to assert that it was no 'mere

accident' that such notions were 'first drawn into experiment and

... first realized ... by the people that of all the nations of


163 Ibid., pp. 758, 761-2.

164 PL, p. 195. Both the Greek-derived word 'atom' and the Latin-derived'individual' have the same basic meaning: something that isindivisible, which cannot be further divided. Lewis and Short'sLatin Dictionary defines 'individuum' as 'an atom, indivisibleparticle', and offers the following example from Cicero: 'ex illisindividuis, unde omnia Democritus gigni affirmat', which translatesas 'out of those atoms, out of which Democritus affirms thateverything is generated'.

165 CL,4, p. 762.

Europe were most characterised ... by the ignorance and contempt

of all that connects it with the past'.(163) For Coleridge, then,

the radical individualism and disregard for tradition of the

French Revolutionaries were clear consequences of mechanism. In

his Philosophical Lectures of 1818-19, this connection between an

atomistic mechanical philosophy and the individualistic

principles of the French Revolution was made even more

explicit.(164)

We have only to put one word for the other, and in themechanical philosophy to give the whole system of theFrench Revolution. Here are certain atoms miraculouslyinvested with certain individual rights, from thecollection of which all right and wrong is to depend.These atoms, by a chance and will of their own, were torush together and thus rushing together they were to forma convention, and this convention was to make aconstitution, and this constitution then was to make acontract ... between the major atoms and the minor onesthat the minor should govern them ... and if there wasany quarrel the major atoms were to assume the power ofrepulsion, suspending then the power of attraction ... .

In the concluding section of his letter to Lord Liverpool,

Coleridge repeated his claim concerning the political effects of

the mechanical philosophy, and warned the Prime Minister of the

grave danger posed by the upper classes' unwitting assent to this

philosophy.(165)

As long as the principles of our Gentry and Clergy aregrounded in [this] false Philosophy, which ... hassucceeded in rendering Metaphysics a word of opprobrium,all the Sunday and National schools in the world will notpreclude Schism in the lower & middle classes.


166 Mayr, Authority, Liberty & Automatic Machinery, pp. 139-89, esp.pp. 164-80. Mayr argues that mechanistic imagery was widely used inthe seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to bolster politicalarguments. Initially, however, the mechanistic imagery was based onan analogy with the clockwork mechanism and tended to support anauthoritarian conception of the state such as that of Frederick II ofPrussia (see the remarkable examples on pp. 108-9).

Coleridge's letter to Liverpool illustrates his conviction

that Britain could only be saved from political upheaval if the

ruling classes recognized that prevailing political ideologies

drew their justification from a mechanistic view of nature. Such

a view of nature was reflected in the atomistic 'Epicurean'

morality of the time in which a concept of moral responsibility

or duty towards others was lacking. It was also patent in the

political economists' mechanistic laissez-faire notion that

capital regulated itself - that 'things find their level' - an

assumption, Coleridge argued, that served to justify the

exploitation of the weaker by the more powerful. For him, (as we

have seen), such immoral conceptions of human behaviour were

principally vindicated through a prevailing sensationalist

epistemology that derived its authority from the mechanical

philosophy. It was crucial, then, to show that this 'Epicurean'

ethics and the views of nature and knowledge on which it was

based were ill-founded.

Coleridge's contention that mechanistic models of nature

bolstered the new liberal politics of the eighteenth and early

nineteenth centuries is supported in much of the literature of

the period. Mayr has offered interesting evidence that there was

in fact a significant relationship between a new generation of

self-regulating machines and the liberal conception of the state

in the eighteenth century.(166) Protagonists of the liberal idea

that it was best for governments to not interfere in the

individual pursuit of economic gain typically described their

economic models in terms analogous to that of a feedback

mechanism. If the economy were left to run on its own, the


167 David Hume, 'Of the Balance of Trade', in Essays, vol. 1, p. 333,cited in Mayr, Authority, Liberty & Automatic Machinery, p. 170.

168 Helvétius, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 3, p. 264, as translated by Mayr,Authority, Liberty & Automatic Machinery, p. 113.

argument goes, it would automatically find its own 'natural'

equilibrium. Mayr cites examples from eighteenth-century anti-

mercantilist writings, including Hume and Adam Smith. Thus Hume

argued, anticipating Smith (see above, pp. 182, 183), that trade

betweeen countries would naturally balance out, in the same way

that(167)

water, wherever it communicates, remains always at alevel. ... were it to be raised in any one place, thesuperior gravity of that part not being balanced, mustdepress it, till it meet a counterpoise; and ... the samecause, which redresses the inequality when it happens,must for ever prevent it, without some violent externaloperation.

Coleridge's attacks on political economy show that he was

persuaded that the idea of a self-regulating mechanism was

strongly implied in the laissez-faire notions of Smith, the

Physiocrats and others.

Not all mechanisms, however, are feedback ones, and Mayr

provides some examples of a different mechanistic model of the

state used by some of the French thinkers who have been discussed

earlier in this chapter. Helvétius and Holbach argued that

states ought to run like an uncomplicated machine, emphasizing

mechanical simplicity rather than self-regulation. Helvétius,

for instance, suggested that good government should function like

a 'simple machine, whose springs would be easy to direct and

would not require that great apparatus of wheels and

counterweights that are so difficult to rewind'.(168) Kramnick

has noted similar arguments to these in late eighteenth-century

Britain. Advocates of reform such as Paine and Priestley

criticized the British constitution on the grounds that it had

become an unwieldy 'machine'. For Priestley, the constitution


169 From the second (1771) edition of Priestley's Essay on the FirstPrinciples of Government, and on the Nature of Political , Civil, andReligious Liberty, in Priestley, Writings, p. 205. Cited inKramnick, 'Priestley's Scientific Liberalism', pp. 23-4.

170 David Williams, Lectures on Political Liberty, (London, 1782),pp. 74-5, cited in Kramnick, 'Priestley's Scientific Liberalism',p. 28. I have not yet seen this work, nor the one by the same authorcited in note 172.

171 Kramnick, loc. cit., pp. 23-4.

needed to be reformed because 'the more complex any machine is

... the more liable it is to disorder.'(169) David Williams, one

of Priestley's dissenting friends, similarly recommended the

adoption of uncomplicated, mechanical principles in the workings

of the state:(170)

as the development of a machine is owing to theprevalence of some constituent power or powers overothers: so in a state, all inconveniences and injuriesare to be ascribed to the want of sufficient counter-action and assistance in some of its parts, to balancethe pressure of the others; and to assist in producingthe ground effect.

While such statements might be viewed as merely figurative,

the mechanistic parallel clearly implied (Kramnick indicates)

that there was no mystery or complexity in the state's

functioning. Like a machine, its workings were visible and

relatively simple.(171) This contained a clear warning for those

who defended the old social order by reference to tradition or

religion. There was the additional implication too, noted by

Coleridge, that the state-machine could readily be reconstructed

if it was no longer functioning adequately. Such revolutionary

connotations of the machine analogy in politics must have been

apparent to Coleridge's contemporaries. Indeed, we observed in

the previous chapter that the links between science and politics

were evident to many at the end of the eighteenth century and

that those opposed to social and political reform saw a definite

connection between revolution and 'Jacobin science'.


172 David Williams, Preparatory Studies for Political Reformers, (London,1810), p. 19, cited in Kramnick, loc. cit., p. 28.

Early in the next century, Priestley's friend, Williams, was

quite explicit that natural philosophy provided a clear model for

social philosophies, arguing that it is 'the principal duty of

man to transfer into social institutions, moral, civil, and

political, the ideas he deduces from the natural world.'(172) On

this, Coleridge certainly would have concurred. The crucial

issue was what view of nature one adopted as one's model.

Coleridge saw mechanism as bolstering a politics grounded

ultimately on self-interest. So what had to be done was to show

that there was in fact a compelling alternative to the prevailing

mechanical philosophy. In the following chapters, we shall see

that this task of providing an alternative model of nature was

one to which Coleridge seriously began to apply himself after

1815.

p.205

CHAPTER IV: 'AN ACT OR POWER' IN MATTER AND SPIRIT—

DYNAMISM AND IDEALISM

IV.1 Introduction

It is well known that in the years after 1815 the mature

Coleridge began to seriously promote a natural philosophy in

Britain that was heavily dependent on the ideas of German

philosophers such as Kant and Coleridge's contemporary, Friedrich

Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854). One of the main aims

of this natural philosophy (which Coleridge variously referred to

as 'dynamic', 'constructive' or 'vital') was to obtain an

understanding of the immaterial substratum of nature, rather than

mere knowledge of the observable properties of matter. He

insisted that his 'dynamic' (or force-based) philosophy ought to

replace the prevailing mechanical philosophy of his time, deeming

the latter superficial.

The term 'dynamic philosophy' requires some clarification.

As used by Coleridge and his German sources, it refers somewhat

generally to a physics in which the fundamental ingredients are

forces, like attractions and repulsions, typically immaterial,

and often acting at a distance. This physics, then, is one that

views nature as essentially active, in contrast to the inert

universe of the mechanical philosophy. Indeed, the word

'dynamic' - of Greek origin - is equivalent to the Latin-derived

'potential', meaning 'power', thus clearly implying activity.

Many of the post-Kantian philosophers and scientists, whose ideas

Coleridge adopted, further viewed the manifestation of the basic

forces of attraction and repulsion in nature on the analogy of

the magnet, and described the interplay of these forces in terms

of 'polarity'. They contended that all natural phenomena or

processes should be understood as the product of polar

Ch.IV: 'An Act or Power' p.206

1 The manuscript of the Opus Maximum, in three volumes, is in theVictoria College Library at the University of Toronto. I have nothad the opportunity to consult this work.

oppositions. The mature Coleridge's philosophy can in fact be

summed up as a belief that nature and the human mind are

permeated with activity, and that all phenomena are the product

of a fundamental tension in the world.

Coleridge of course was no scientist, so it is important to

recognize that his account of the dynamic philosophy was not

derived from his own investigations, but to a large extent

borrowed from others' more systematic accounts. Some of these

accounts were also by non-scientists, such as Kant and Schelling,

and were more concerned with a rational demonstration of dynamism

than with experimental proof for it. Other sources, however,

were by practising scientists, and purported to offer empirical

confirmation of the fundamental status of forces in nature.

In his lifetime, moreover, Coleridge did not publish any

systematic treatise on the dynamic philosophy, but repeatedly

championed it fragmentarily, in a number of post-1815 works that

also dealt with other subjects of a literary, philosophical,

religious and political character, such as his revised 1818

edition of The Friend. Nevertheless, a substantial essay on the

topic, Hints towards the Formation of a More Comprehensive Theory

of Life (1848), was published posthumously. This, together with

detailed accounts in letters, notebooks, marginalia, and the

unpublished Opus Maximum(1)- a major work intended as a summing-up

of his whole philosophy - are the principal sources for

Coleridge's views on the dynamic philosophy.

What all of these sources reveal is that his reasons for

recommending the philosophy were varied. There were, for

example, technical reasons. For, like many others at the time,

he considered mechanism to be a failure in its own terms, unable


2 See, for example: Halévy, Liberal Awakening, p. 4 et seq.; Thompson,English Working Class, pp. 660-1, 673-83, 693-700.

even to provide plausible accounts of some important properties

of the material world. Indeed, we have already noted that his

condemnation of the Newtonian aether involved criticism of the

technical details of mechanistic explanations (pp. 78-80).

Below, we shall in fact see that he saw a dynamic natural

philosophy as offering an explanation of phenomena far more

satisfactory than that provided by mechanism.

Yet there were clearly also other, non-technical reasons for

Coleridge's promotion of dynamism. Undoubtedly, one motive for

advancing this alternative to the mechanical philosophy was

religious. For the underlying immaterial forces revealed by a

dynamic philosophy seemed more supportive of a religious view

that nature is pervaded by spirit. However, we have repeatedly

observed that Coleridge's defences of religion had a distinct

socio-political dimension, and in the previous chapters we noted

that his public condemnation of atheistic and materialistic

natural philosophies was to a large degree motivated by concern

about their social consequences. In this (though particularly in

the following) chapter we shall see that there is a good deal of

evidence to show that his promotion of a dynamic natural

philosophy performed a similar function. In 1815, the Napoleonic

wars had ended, and Britain was entering a particularly unstable

period, marked by high unemployment and rising social unrest.

This was the period leading up to the Reform Bill of 1832, in

which the House of Commons was made more representative and the

suffrage extended.(2) Coleridge saw it as urgent to offer a

cogent alternative to the natural philosophies that he saw as

underpinning rising liberal and radical ideologies. This

alternative to mechanism presented itself to him in the form of

the Naturphilosophie ('nature philosophy' but not 'natural

philosophy') that was an integral part of Schelling's idealism.


3 In particular by: Levere, Poetry Realized in Nature: Samuel TaylorColeridge and Early Nineteenth-Century Science; Modiano, Coleridgeand the Concept of Nature, pp. 160-203; and Orsini, Coleridge andGerman Idealism, pp. 192-237.

Coleridge's debt to Schelling and the latter's scientific

followers has been well documented by several commentators,(3) but

the political dimension of Coleridge's interest in

Naturphilosophie has not yet been observed.

The principal aim of this earlier chapter, however, will be

to explain the scientific and philosophical basis of Coleridge's

dynamic philosophy, and, in particular, its derivation from

Schelling's idealist Naturphilosophie. The chapter will also

observe a very early fascination with immaterialistic natural

philosophies, dating from the time of Coleridge's enthusiasm for

Priestley's 'materialism'. It thus documents an important

continuity in Coleridge's thinking - a continuity enduring from

the mid-1790s through to the 1830s, and not yet dealt with in the

literature, either. Likewise, the important similarities between

Priestley's cosmology and those of the German philosophers to

whom Coleridge was attracted seem not to have been canvassed by

scholars in the field. Both positions presented a view of nature

as fundamentally constituted by immaterial forces of attractions

and repulsions. The difference was that in Priestley's physics

there appeared to be no ontological distinction between matter

and spirit, whereas in Naturphilosophie matter was subordinate to

spirit.

A related continuity in Coleridge's thought that will be

investigated in the present chapter was his lifelong interest in

idealist philosophies: that is, philosophies that take what we

know to be primarily structured by our minds, and not by the

external, sensory world. We shall see that the young Coleridge's

absorption in Platonic philosophies and in Berkeley's

immaterialism was indicative of an early predilection for


idealism, and it was the idealist framework that especially

appealed to him after 1800 in thinkers like Kant and Schelling.

We shall also see that Naturphilosophie was thoroughly grounded

in an idealist epistemology, and this was a major reason for

Coleridge's attraction to it.

The chapter will also explore Coleridge's enthusiasm for a

dynamic direction he came to detect in British science. As a

young man in the late 1790s, he established a close friendship

with Humphry Davy, and eagerly followed the budding chemist's

work at the Royal Institution from 1801. Later, in the 1818

Friend, Coleridge promoted the chemistry of Davy and some of the

latter's colleagues as illustration of the dynamic direction

science ought to take. In that work, he also advanced the

physiology of the eighteenth-century surgeon and anatomist, John

Hunter, as another important specimen of dynamism. The mature

Coleridge was excited about such developments, for they

corroborated his own views on science largely derived from

Schelling's dynamic Naturphilosophie.

This chapter will begin, then, with an account of Coleridge's

relatively early espousal of immaterialistic cosmologies in the

mid-1790s. In particular, the pantheism in his thought of this

era will be outlined and its appeal to him explained in terms of

its radical political implications. The following sections will

go on to investigate his growing interest (from 1800) in the

dynamic natural philosophies and idealist systems of thought of

German philosophers such as Kant and Schelling. The speculative

framework of Naturphilosophie will then be canvassed, followed by

a discussion of Coleridge's advocacy of British dynamism.

Finally, his promotion of Schelling's Naturphilosophie in the

Theory of Life will be examined. We shall see that Coleridge

followed Schelling in insisting that nature is fundamentally


4 Southey, Joan of Arc, Bk. 2, ll. 44-5, 49-54, pp. 42-3.

5 Ibid., ll. 59, 57, p. 43.

active and that all phenomena can be explained in terms of a

universal law of polarity.

IV.2 The Young Coleridge, 'Monads' and Pantheism

From the time of his earliest statements about natural

philosophy in the mid-1790s, even when he was enthusiastic about

mechanism, Coleridge embraced an immaterialistic physics. This

is obvious in his support for Priestley's force-based view of

nature, as it is also from his criticism of the 'mechanic

philosophy' in the lines he contributed to Southey's Joan of Arc.

There, for instance, in a section following the condemnation of

Newton's aether (see pp. 78-80), he advocated a physics which

gave a central role to the influence of immaterial agencies in

nature. In this immaterialistic conception of the world, God is

the most important kind of agency, but there are also other

spiritual agencies at work: 'self-conscious minds', executing the

design of an 'all-conscious Spirit', even though each one seems

individually 'to pursue its own self-centering end':(4)

Some nurse the infant diamond in the mine;Some roll the genial juices thro' the oak;Some drive the mutinous clouds to clash in air;And rushing on the storm with whirlwind speedYoke the red lightning to their vollying car.

Such agencies are also portrayed as having a role in human

affairs, although Coleridge did not make much of this notion

here. He merely remarked that the 'eternal good' is realized

through their 'complex interests weaving human fates'.(5)

Piper has shown that the central idea expressed here of

spiritual agencies acting in nature was immediately derived from



7 Darwin, Botanic Garden, Pt. 1, p. vii. Another of Darwin's reasonsfor using these Rosicrucian symbols was because 'they were originallythe names of hieroglyphic figures representing the elements'. Ibid.On Darwin's use of myth, see Primer, 'Darwin's Temple of Nature'.

8 See Leibniz, New Essays, pp. 55, 440, 443, 473-4.

9 Piper, Active Universe, pp. 39-40. Piper indicates here that anotherpotential source for Coleridge's 'monads' is the sixteenth-centuryNeoplatonist, Giordano Bruno, but again notes that there is noevidence that Coleridge had read Bruno at that time.

the young Coleridge's reading of Erasmus Darwin's Botanic Garden

(1791).(6) In this work, Darwin had depicted the forces of nature

as the mythical spirits of Rosicrucian occultism, 'Gnomes,

Sylphs, Nymphs, and Salamanders', but used this mythical

structure as nothing more than a poetic device. It provided 'a

proper machinery for a Botanic poem', he said, and he did not (it

seems) actually believe that a spiritual realm influenced nature

in this way.(7) Yet Coleridge found in Darwin's allegorical

framework a means of representing his own conception of nature as

animated by real, spiritual agencies.

In Joan of Arc, Coleridge also referred to these agencies as

'monads', a term with obvious Leibnizian resonances. Indeed,

Coleridge's 'self-conscious minds', like Leibniz's monads, are

immaterial, active substances. Moreover, their independence,

regulated by an 'all-conscious Spirit', is similar to Leibniz's

notion that God co-ordinates nature indirectly, by means of a

pre-established harmony.(8) But there is in fact no evidence that

Coleridge had read Leibniz at the time, and Piper concludes that

the young poet's use of the term 'monad' was in part an

affirmation of Priestley's cosmology.(9) Yet, while Coleridge

clearly saw his speculations about the immaterial world in Joan

of Arc as congruous with Priestley's physics, neither the term

'monad' nor the exact idea contained in Coleridge's use of it

figure in such key statements of Priestley's metaphysical

position as the Disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit or the


10 See: Whalley, 'Bristol Library Borrowings', pp. 120, 124; Piper,Active Universe, pp. 43-6.

11 Cudworth, True Intellectual System, vol. 1, pp. 147-51, 163-4.Cf. Hutchison, 'Supernaturalism', pp. 319-23.


13 'Religious Musings', ll. 405-8, PW,1, p. 124.

published debate with Richard Price on materialism and

necessitarianism.

Such a notion is, however, apparent in another text familiar to

Coleridge in this period - Ralph Cudworth's True Intellectual System

of the Universe - which is also discussed by Piper.(10) In this

work, Cudworth argued that God does not intervene directly in

nature, but acts through a delegated spiritual intermediary that

Cudworth called a 'Plastick Nature'. This immaterial, 'Plastick

Nature' had various theological and philosophical advantages for

Cudworth. It retained a role for spiritual causation in nature, and

also enabled one to explain phenomena of an organic kind that could

not be well-accounted for by the mechanical philosophy.

Furthermore, it made theological sense to Cudworth to have such a

spiritual intermediary, because a perfect Deity could presumably not

be held responsible for nature's imperfections and neither would it

befit Him to have to attend to every trivial feature of nature's

workings.(11)

Piper suggests that Cudworth's 'Plastick Nature' most probably

informed the young Coleridge's cosmology,(12) and, in Coleridge's

poem 'Religious Musings' (1794-6), we in fact find the word

'plastic' closely associated with the term 'monad'. Toward the end

of that poem, Coleridge apostrophized the spirits 'of plastic power,

that interfused/ Roll through the grosser and material mass/ In

organizing surge! Holies of God!/ (And what if Monads of the

infinite mind?)'(13) However, as Piper points out, there is a

fundamental difference here between Cudworth's 'Plastick Nature' and


14 See Piper, Active Universe, p. 46.

15 'The Eolian Harp', ll. 44-8, PW,1, p. 102.

16 Ibid., ll. 61-2. On Coleridge's uneasy relationship with pantheism,see McFarland, Pantheist Tradition.

17 Piper, Active Universe, pp. 32-3. 36, 39-40.

Coleridge's 'monads'. Unlike the latter, the 'Plastick Nature' was

definitely not part 'of the infinite mind'.(14)

It seems, then, that there is no clear solution to the

problem of sources for Coleridge's 'monads'. One thing that

emerges here, however, from the suggestion that such agencies

constitute 'the infinite mind' is a tendency toward an

unorthodox, pantheistic conflation of God and nature.

Such a pantheistic tendency is particularly evident in

another of Coleridge's poems from this period, 'The Eolian Harp'

(1795), in which the notion of a 'plastic' spirit animating

nature is also apparent. There, the young poet speculated(15)

And what if all of animated natureBe but organic Harps diversely fram'd,That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweepsPlastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,At once the Soul of each, and God of all?

This is a fairly explicit description of pantheism, and Coleridge

was aware of its heterodoxy. For, in spite of his manifest

attraction to it, in the lines that follow these, he disavowed

his heretical opinions and affirmed his faith in a personal

transcendent Deity 'who with his saving mercies healéd me,/ A

sinful and most miserable man'.(16)

Piper has argued that this pantheistic tendency in

Coleridge's early cosmology also stemmed from Priestley(17) - a

claim that is principally based on a later manuscript note by

Coleridge to lines from 'The Destiny of Nations' (1796), a poem

that incorporated most of his contribution to Southey's Joan of


18 'The Destiny of Nations', ll. 460-1, PW,1, pp. 146-7.

19 Ibid., p. 147n.1.

20 This debate was entitled A Free Discussion of the Doctrines ofMaterialism, and Philosophical Necessity, in a Correspondence betweenDr. Price, and Dr. Priestley (1778).

Arc. In the lines in question, Joan is represented as praising

God, the 'All-conscious Presence of the Universe!/ Nature's vast

ever-acting Energy!'(18) In his later annotation to these lines,

Coleridge first defended them as possessing 'a sane sense', but

acknowledged that 'they are easily, and more naturally

interpreted with a very false and dangerous one.' He went on to

explain this ambiguity as due to his having been, at the time of

the poem's composition, a follower of Joseph Priestley and the

latter's Unitarian creed: 'one of the Mongrels, the Josephidites

[Josephides = the Son of Joseph], a proper name of distinction

from those who believe in, as well as believe Christ the only

begotten Son of the Living God before all Time.'(19) Coleridge,

then, was insinuating that pantheism was an integral part of the

Unitarianism which he had embraced as a young man though later

rejected. Piper accepts this rationale and explains Coleridge's

early cosmology as influenced by pantheistic tendencies found in

Priestley and in Unitarianism.

There are, however, some problems with this explanation.

Firstly, it presumes that Priestley's cosmology was typically

Unitarian. This was not the case, as is attested by the well-

known published debate between the Socinian Priestley and his

friend Richard Price - an Arian Unitarian - over Priestley's

theological views.(20) Secondly, it is not clear that Priestley's

cosmology really was pantheistic. In the 1777 Disquisitions

relating to Matter and Spirit, for example, Priestley attacked

Andrew Baxter for what he claimed was a failure to make a clear

enough distinction between God and nature. Baxter, according to

Priestley, had made God the direct source of matter's activity,


21 Priestley, Disquisitions (1777), pp. 8-10. A similar accusation thatBaxter's natural philosophy tended toward 'making God the soul of theworld' was made in the article on 'Earth' in the 2nd and 3rd editionsof the Encyclopaedia Britannica, cited in Hughes, 'Science in EnglishEncyclopædias', p. 365. In this article it was also implied thatPriestley, Boscovich and Michell might run into similar theologicaldifficulties because of their radical immaterialism. SeeEncyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 6, p. 233.

22 Priestley, Disquisitions (1782), vol. 1, p. 42, cited in Piper,Active Universe, p. 37.

which Priestley claimed was tantamount to identifying God with

nature, as in the pantheistic philosophy of Giordano Bruno. By

contrast, his own account (he maintained) made the active powers

in nature separate from, though still dependent upon, God.(21) In

the second, 1782 edition of the Disquisitions, he added a

disclaimer that his views were not at all like those of that most

eminent of pantheists, Spinoza. The difference between their

positions, Priestley insisted, was that his own system

presupposed 'a source of infinite power, and superior

intelligence, from which all inferior beings are derived; that

every inferior intelligent being has a consciousness distinct

from that of the supreme intelligence'.(22)

Nevertheless, Priestley's disavowal of Spinozism implies that

he had been attacked on such grounds, and it is easy to

understand how his thought might be construed as pantheistic.

For we have seen (pp. 24-26) that he denied any real distinction

between matter and spirit, and, although God was specifically

excluded from this ontological levelling, within a traditional

dualistic perspective this suggested that God too was indistinct

from matter.

The young Coleridge, however, did not apparently see his own

Unitarianism or Priestley's cosmology as fundamentally

pantheistic, notwithstanding his later note to 'The Destiny of

Nations'. This is clear from a 1796 letter, in which he

expressed irritation at discovering pantheistic notions in what

he otherwise viewed as Priestley's exemplary theology and natural


23 CL,1, p. 192: to the Rev. John Edwards, 20 March 1796. The youngColeridge's high regard for Priestley's theology is indicated by a1798 letter that has already been cited, in which Coleridge wrote, 'Iregard every experiment that Priestly made in Chemistry, as givingwings to his more sublime theological works.' Ibid., p. 372: to JohnPrior Estlin, 16 January 1798.

philosophy. 'How is it', Coleridge grumbled, 'that Dr Priestley

is not an atheist? - He asserts in three different Places, that

God not only does, but is, everything.'(23) This suggests that

Coleridge in this period saw his own (and Priestley's broader

views) as largely inconsistent with an outlook that conflated God

and nature. Thus, while there clearly was a pantheistic tendency

in Coleridge's early thought it is not at all clear that it was

derived from Priestley, as Coleridge subsequently asserted in his

annotation to 'The Destiny of Nations'. Yet we shall see below

that Coleridge later came to view a Unitarian denial of Christ's

transcendence as having the same theological and moral

implications as the pantheistic idea that God is not distinct

from the universe.

Where, then, did the pantheistic tendencies in Coleridge's

early cosmology come from? There is no ready answer to this

question, but one might come closer to finding it by asking why

Coleridge was attracted to such a way of viewing nature,

particularly when it was publicly frowned upon. A clue is

provided once again by looking at the way in which natural

philosophy was linked with politics, for there were distinct

political implications in a pantheistic view of nature. The

challenges it posed were in fact typical of the Enlightenment.

To begin with, it brought into question ecclesiastical authority.

For if everything and every person were a part of God, the

spiritual mediation of the Christian church was superfluous.

Such an idea clearly threatened the Church's position as well as

that of the political hierarchy it sanctioned. Moreover, the

idea that God was present in every person implied more equal

access to knowledge of His will. So, any attempt to justify


24 Cf.: Jacob, Radical Enlightenment, pp. 80, 224; Beiser, Fate ofReason, pp. 50-2, 336. Beiser notes that, in Germany, a widespreadperception of a connection between pantheism and radical politics wasconspicuous from the sixteenth through to the early nineteenthcenturies. He suggests that there was a significant continuitybetween later German pantheism and the radical demands of theReformation. He points out that the historical criticism of theBible championed in Spinoza's Tractatus theologicus politicus had toa large extent undermined the Reformation idea that the Bible was themedium by which one could know God's will. Pantheism, Beisercontends, overcame this obstacle, through the idea that God's wishescould be known even more directly, by experiencing the divinitywithin oneself.

25 The political importance of Coleridge's pantheism has previously beensuggested by Wylie in an analysis of 'Religious Musings'. Wyliepoints out that one passage of Coleridge's poem implies a connectionbetween a pantheistic vision of the world - in which all are a partof God - and the French revolutionary message of universal'fraternity'. In this passage, Coleridge claimed that it is 'thesublime of man ... to know ourselves/ Parts and proportions of onewondrous whole!/ This fraternises man, this constitutes/ Ourcharities and bearings. But 'tis God/ Diffused through all, thatdoth make all one whole'. Wylie, Young Coleridge, p. 102; 'ReligiousMusings', ll. 126-31, PW,1, pp. 113-14.

26 In a letter to Southey, he described himself as 'sunk in Spinoza ...undisturbed as a Toad in a Rock'. CL,1, p. 534: to Robert Southey,

(continued...)

political inequality on the basis of special insight into God's

intentions was open to question.(24) On a deeper level, the

belief that God was in everything blurred the dualistic

distinction between spirit and matter, used in late eighteenth-

century Britain to defend the authority of the religious and

political Establishments (see above, pp. 104-109). One can see,

then, that pantheism was harmonious with the young Coleridge's

Unitarian hostility to the Church of England, his Pantisocratic

communitarianism, and his view of Jesus as a champion of 'the

rights of Man' (cf. above, pp. 30, 31, 41-45). A pantheistic

view of nature would thus have sustained the religious and

political ideals he was advocating in the mid-1790s.(25)

Throughout the rest of the post-revolutionary decade,

pantheism continued to remain attractive to Coleridge, despite

his occasional reservations about it, and around 1799 he became

deeply interested in the notoriously pantheistic philosophy of

Spinoza.(26) This new interest was inspired by contact with the


26(...continued)30 September 1799. See also ibid., p. 551: to Robert Southey, 24December 1799.

27 See: Beiser, Fate of Reason, pp. 44-126, 158-63; Zammito, Genesis ofKant's Critique, pp. 228-47.

28 Beiser, Fate of Reason, pp. 49-52, 76-7, 85; Zammito, Genesis ofKant's Critique, pp. 11-12, 228-9, 240-2.

29 CL,2, p. 1196: to Thomas Clarkson, 13 October 1806.

intellectual scene in Germany during the ten months he spent

travelling in 1798 and 1799. For, in late eighteenth-century

Germany, Spinoza's philosophy was keenly discussed, with the

philosophical community passionately divided over its merits. In

particular, a new generation of thinkers, inspired in part by

Kant, had expressed its support for Spinoza,(27) and this no doubt

influenced the young, impressionable Coleridge.

This German connection once again reveals the broadly

theologico-political stakes in pantheism. Certainly, there was a

purely metaphysical dimension to the debate surrounding Spinoza

that emerged in late eighteenth-century Germany, but those

antagonistic to pantheism were explicit that what especially

worried them was the way this philosophy could be used to subvert

religious and political authority.(28) There is an obvious

parallel here with the contemporary debate in Britain (examined

in Chapter II) surrounding 'Jacobin science'.

A disillusionment with Spinoza and pantheism only becomes

evident in Coleridge's writings around 1805 - after his political

change of heart - and is related to a growing hostility to

Unitarianism and its moral and political implications. Thus, in

a letter of 1806, he complained that(29)

Unitarianism in its' immediate intelligential ...consequences, is Atheism or Spinosism - God becomes amere power in darkness, even as Gravitation, and insteadof a moral Religion of practical Influence we shall haveonly a physical Theory to gratify ideal curiosity ... .


Coleridge had now come to believe that both Unitarianism and

pantheism lacked the moral authority provided by the idea of a

personal, transcendent God - an idea upheld by the Anglican

Church and sustained by a dualistic ontology. On the other hand,

cosmologies such as those of Priestley and Spinoza rendered

dangerously ambiguous the politically important, hierarchical

distinction between spirit and matter.

What is important to note here for our picture of the young

Coleridge's philosophy of nature is that, first of all, on a

metaphysical level, pantheism was compatible with his belief that

nature is activated by spirit and thus with the immaterialistic

cosmology to which he was drawn in Priestley. Secondly, on a

theological and political level, both Priestley's physics and a

pantheistic view of the world seemed to deny a hierarchy in

nature, and this had radical political implications. Coleridge's

subsequent repudiation of Priestley and Spinoza in the years

after 1800 was informed by an awareness of these implications.

IV.3 Dynamism

So, from 1800 onwards, Coleridge began to seriously apply

himself to a study of the idealist philosophies of the Germans -

Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), Schelling, and the

scientific followers of Schelling's programme of

Naturphilosophie. One of the things that particularly appealed

to him in these thinkers was the same immaterialistic emphasis to

which he had earlier been drawn in Priestley. For, like the

latter, these thinkers viewed the fundamental components of

nature as immaterial forces, the action of which produced

'material' phenomena. There were no solid, extended atoms in

this view of nature nor material aethers. The only serious

reservation that the mature Coleridge expressed about some of


30 Leibniz, Philosophical Papers, vol. 2, p. 712.

31 See McGuire, 'Newton's Invisible Realm'.

32 Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, pp. 29-30, 42-3.

these force-based or 'dynamic' cosmologies, as we shall see,

concerned a pantheistic tendency he detected in them.

The term 'dynamic' derives from the Greek word for

'potential' (as in Aristotle's philosophy) and had been used by

Leibniz to describe a metaphysics based on innate activity. An

outline of what he called this 'new science of dynamics' was

provided in the 1695 Specimen dynamicum, in which Leibniz argued

that the existence of what we call matter could only be explained

by assuming underlying forces in nature. He maintained that the

'matter' of the mechanists must be derived from(30)

something prior to extension, namely, a natural forceeverywhere implanted by the Author of nature ... [which]must constitute the inmost nature of the body, since itis the character of substance to act, and extension meansonly the continuation or the diffusion of a striving andcounterstriving already presupposed by it ... .

The idea that force is an important ingredient in physics

gained wide acceptance during the eighteenth century, and this

was not only due to Leibniz. For a natural philosophy based on

forces had also been given enormous credence by Newton, though

Newton had retained a role for solid, extended matter in his

scheme of nature, and equivocated on the real nature of force.

Newton's physics also differed from that of Leibniz in the

important function Newton gave to spiritual agencies which he

referred to as 'active principles'.(31) Leibniz had endeavoured

to exclude such agencies from the province of natural philosophy,

and, in his well-known debate with Samuel Clarke, condemned what

he saw as Newton's excessive supernaturalism.(32) Nevertheless,

the immaterialistic emphasis in Newton's physics influenced the

development of some important force-based philosophies in late


33 See Heimann and McGuire, 'Newtonian Forces and Lockean Powers'.

34 Priestley, Disquisitions (1777), pp. 19-20. Boscovich, however, wasalso indebted to Newton, and (like Kant after him) endeavoured tofind a compromise between the positions of both Leibniz and Newton.See Jammer, Concepts of Force, pp. 170-8. Interestingly, Boscovichwas particularly influential on Scottish philosophers and scientificthinkers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,including the Common Sense philosophers whose views Priestleypublicly attacked. See Olson, 'Reception of Boscovich's Ideas'.

35 See Calinger, 'Kant and Newtonian Science', pp. 349-54.

36 Kant, Metaphysical Foundations, p. 91.

eighteenth-century Britain, including that of Priestley.(33)

Priestley's 'dynamic physics, however, was derived partly also -

as he explicitly acknowledged - from Boscovich, a major

representative of the continental dynamic tradition stemming from

Leibniz.(34)

The late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German

idealist philosophies to which Coleridge was attracted were also

building upon the dynamic physics of both Leibniz and Newton,

particularly as mediated through Kant. In early works, Kant had

critically discussed and offered his own modifications to the

positions of both thinkers.(35) His mature conclusions on the

role of forces in physics were presented in his 1786 Metaphysical

Foundations of Natural Science, in which he argued against a

mechanical explanation of nature in favour of a 'dynamical

natural philosophy':(36)

that mode of explication which derives the specificvariety of matter not from matters as machines, i.e., asmere tools of external moving forces, but from the propermoving forces of attraction and repulsion originallybelonging to these matters ... .

The young Schelling followed the dynamic interpretation of

nature of Kant and Leibniz, and asserted in his Ideas for a

Philosophy of Nature (1797:1803) that 'matter and bodies' could

only be conceived as the 'products of opposing forces, or rather,


37 Schelling, Ideas, p. 156.

38 Ibid., pp. 153-60. Newton's mechanistic atomism, Schellingsuggested, was due to a theological prejudice. For mechanism, heindicated, required 'the action of God'. Ibid., p. 160. Hutchisonhas demonstrated that much seventeenth-century mechanical philosophywas in fact radically supernaturalistic, and so could be harmonizedwith orthodox Christian theology. See Hutchison, 'Supernaturalism'.

39 CC,9, p. 400. The works of Kant to which Coleridge was referringwere the Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (1747) andthe Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755).

are themselves nothing else but these forces.'(37) Schelling,

however, was critical of Newton, for adopting what Schelling

(with some justice) saw as a predominantly mechanistic, rather

than a dynamic, view of nature. He complained that the British

scientist had unnecessarily postulated the existence of solid,

impenetrable particles, when one could quite adequately account

for natural phenomena on the basis of forces alone.(38)

We have observed that Coleridge's mature advocacy of dynamism

was not a novel development in his thought: he had earlier

embraced Priestley's dynamic physics. Yet, he wrote as if it

were new, and refused to consider his erstwhile hero, Priestley,

as an important participant in this dynamic tradition. This

attitude to Priestley was like that Coleridge demonstrated

towards Newton, whose role in a dynamic physics he also tended to

ignore. According to Coleridge, it was Kant - and definitely not

Newton - whose early work was 'the first product of the Dynamic

Philosophy in the Physical Sciences, from the time ... of

Giordano Bruno'.(39) I have argued elsewhere that this relegation

of Newton to a back seat in the development of dynamic natural

philosophy was motivated by Coleridge's hostility to a

'materialistic' version of 'Newtonian' physics, of which he had

come to see Priestley as the most recent major proponent.

Newton's part in the origination of this physics eventually led

Coleridge to represent the British scientist as opposed to an


40 Sysak, 'Coleridge's Construction', pp. 71-2, 75-6.

41 Ibid., pp. 74-5.

42 CC,7, vol. 1, p. 136.

immaterialistic dynamic philosophy.(40) It is nonetheless curious

that Coleridge considered Priestley's cosmology to be so unlike

those of the German thinkers he admired. How he saw their

cosmologies as differing, therefore, requires some clarification.

Unfortunately, this difference is not spelt out by Coleridge

in any detail. At some stage, as we have seen, he came to

disapprove of what he claimed was Priestley's pantheism, but this

was a complaint he was also to make about Schelling and the

latter's programme of Naturphilosophie. Moreover, he was not

afraid to admit that a key figure in the dynamic tradition he was

promoting was Bruno, whose pantheism was well known. It is

unlikely, then, that pantheism was a sufficient reason for

Coleridge's exclusion of Priestley from the genealogy of dynamic

philosophy. I have indicated in the aforementioned paper that

the difference can in fact be accounted for partly on axiological

grounds.(41) For what Coleridge found objectionable in

Priestley's monistic physics was a denial of the pre-eminence of

spirit over matter: for Priestley, matter and spirit were

ontologically equivalent. One might even interpret Priestley's

system as affirming the primacy of matter, for he repeatedly

referred to his system as a kind of 'materialism' (see above,

pp. 26, 61), thus implying that spirit could be reduced to

matter, rather than the other way around. Indeed, in the

Biographia Literaria (1817), Coleridge indicated that Priestley

had initially presupposed the existence of matter which he then

divested 'of all its material qualities' and 'substituted

spiritual powers'.(42) By contrast, in the German philosophers,

'spirit' was the fundamental category to which the idea of


43 Interestingly, Robison thought very highly of Boscovich's dynamism,and argued that such dynamic explanations were preferable toaetherial ones. For the latter (he claimed) had been used as thebasis for materialistic systems of thought. See Schofield, Mechanismand Materialism, pp. 280-1.

44 CC,7, vol. 1, pp. 129-30.

'matter' was subordinated. For the mature Coleridge, it was this

which fundamentally differentiated Priestley from the Germans.

The question remains as to why Coleridge's mature

understanding of Priestley's physics was so different from his

earlier thinking in the 1790s. Once again, an answer to this is

provided by considering the political dimension of natural

philosophy. In Chapter II we saw that, in Britain after the

French Revolution, there was an ideological motivation behind

some important complaints about natural philosophies that denied

a primary role for spirit. Robison, for example, defended a

hierarchical, dualistic physics against what he believed was a

revolutionary strategy of Priestley and some French scientists to

do away with dualism. The dualistic postulation of an autonomous

realm of spirit provided the ruling elite with a convenient

sanction for its authority, which Priestley and his friends were

undermining. By condemning Priestley's monism, the conservative

Coleridge can be seen as echoing Robison's political concerns

about Priestley's science.(43)

Nevertheless, Coleridge never accepted the dualism of the

mechanical philosophy, and in fact criticized it in the

Biographia Literaria. There, he argued (much as Priestley had

done in the Disquisitions) that the Cartesian removal of mind

from matter posed insurmountable problems as to how these

heterogeneous substances could interact.(44) The solution, as he

saw it, was again not unlike that proposed by Priestley: matter

and spirit should be viewed as different manifestations of the

same underlying substance. This settled the puzzle of matter-


45 Ibid.

spirit interaction, and seemed, moreover, to be supported by

empirical facts. Coleridge argued that(45)

since impenetrability is intelligible only as a mode ofresistance; its admission places the essence of matter inan act or power, which it possesses in common withspirit; and body and spirit are therefore no longerabsolutely heterogeneous, but may without any absurditybe supposed to be different modes, or degrees inperfection, of a common substratum.

Now, while the ontology proposed here by Coleridge resembled

that of Priestley, its 'modes, or degrees in perfection'

indicated a hierarchy that was absent in Priestley's monism. For

Coleridge, spirit was superior to matter, even though they shared

'a common substratum'. His mature ontology thus preserved the

hierarchical structure of dualism, with its authoritarian

connotations, but without its technical problems.

IV.4 Idealism

This dynamic ontology, explicitly adopted by the mature

Coleridge, was underpinned by an idealist philosophy in which our

knowledge about the world is taken to be primarily structured by

our minds. For Coleridge and the German thinkers he was

championing, this idealist perspective had an important ethical

dimension. For, in contrast to a mechanistic view of the mind as

passively conditioned by the external environment, idealists took

the mind to be active in producing knowledge and behaviour.

Their dynamic psychology implied that human actions were not

wholly constrained by the apparently deterministic causal

relations found in nature, but could, to some extent, be freely

chosen. So, whereas a mechanistic psychology portrayed human

behaviour as governed by external sensations of pleasure and

pain, a dynamic psychology suggested that human beings were not


46 Holmes, Darker Reflections, pp. 394, 410-11. In this second part ofhis biography of Coleridge, Holmes represents Coleridge's thinkingabout religion as a personal quest to come to terms with suffering.While there is obviously a lot of truth in this, Holmes therebyneglects a significant social dimension of Coleridge's writingpertaining to religion. For we have seen that Coleridge's religiousrecommendations were often expressed in opposition to the utilitarianmorality he observed around him, and which he feared was producing amore fragmented, individualistic society. This socio-politicalaspect of Coleridge's religious, philosophical, and scientificthought is not dealt with in Holmes's otherwise engaging study.

entirely at the mercy of their senses and could choose to act

otherwise than from self-interest. An idealist view of the mind,

then, was opposed to the mechanistic psychologies of eighteenth-

century Necessitarians such as Hartley and Priestley, and this

was no doubt another motive for the mature Coleridge's hostility

to Priestley's natural philosophy.

In his recent biography of Coleridge, Holmes draws attention

to this ethical dimension of Coleridge's thinking on psychology.

He portrays Coleridge's interest in dynamism as related to the

exploration of the creative faculty of the Imagination - the

faculty that exemplified for Coleridge and other Romantics the

reality of human free will in opposition to eighteenth-century

determinism. Holmes rightly observes that this affirmation of

idealism was also of profound religious importance to

Coleridge.(46) In no way denying these motivations, my purpose is

to add another one. For we have repeatedly seen that there were

distinct political reasons for Coleridge's rejection of the

mechanical philosophy.

Like his interest in dynamism, idealism was not a totally new

feature of Coleridge's thought. Indeed, we have observed that,

as early as the mid-1790s, he was attracted to a Platonic

conception of knowledge, according to which the fundamental

structure of the phenomenal world (the 'forms' or 'ideas') is

amenable to rational inspection only, and is forever beyond the

reach of sensory experience. A penchant for other philosophies

that similarly took the view that all knowledge is dependent on


47 CL,1, p. 245: to Thomas Poole, 1 November 1796; ibid., p. 278: toJohn Thelwall, 17 December 1796; PW,1, p. 124n.2. On Coleridge andBerkeley, see also Deschamps, Pensée de Coleridge, pp. 422-6.

48 The main sources for my discussion of Kant here are: Cristaudo,Metaphysics of Science and Freedom, pp. 47-125; Roberts, GermanPhilosophy, pp. 9-55.

our minds was further apparent in Coleridge's enthusiasm for

Berkeley's immaterialism (in the years 1796-98). In a letter of

late 1796 to Poole, Coleridge ranged Berkeley with Hartley and

the seventeenth-century bishop, Jeremy Taylor, as the men he most

admired. Shortly after this, in a letter to Thelwall, he

declared himself to be 'a Berkleian', and in a note to a passage

of his poem, 'Religious Musings' (1794-6), in which a spiritual

reality underlying this life is alluded to, he indicated that

such a notion could only be understood by 'those, who, like the

Author, believe and feel the sublime system of Berkley'.(47)

Coleridge's serious study of Kant and Schelling from the

early 1800s can only have confirmed this idealist tendency in his

thinking. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant had argued that

our knowledge of an external reality is restricted to our mental

representations of this reality via perception: one can only know

the sensible appearances of things, or 'phenomena', not the

things in themselves, or 'noumena', as Kant called them.(48) Kant

thus rejected the possibility of knowing the ultimate reality on

which our experience is based. This was not to deny the

existence of such a reality, but only our capacity to apprehend

its actual nature. According to his perspective, our whole

empirical reality is filtered through our minds - a position

which he termed 'transcendental idealism', the 'transcendental'


49 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 491 B 519. For the distinctionbetween 'noumena' and 'phenomena', see ibid., B 294-315. Kant'sphilosophy is sometimes read as having a fundamentally ontologicalorientation. On the continuing debate over whether Kant's criticalproject was epistemological or ontological in its aims, seeCristaudo, Metaphysics of Science and Freedom, pp. 61-2.

50 Hume, Treatise, Bk. 1, Pt. 3, Sec. 14, (pp. 205-23); Tarnas, WesternMind, pp. 337-51; Cristaudo, Metaphysics of Science and Freedom,pp. 51-6.

here referring to the a priori conditions which 'transcend' or

govern our knowledge and experience. 'Everything intuited in

space or time,' Kant wrote,(49)

and therefore all objects of any experience possible to us,are nothing but appearances, that is, mere representations,which, in the manner in which they are represented, asextended beings, or as series of alterations, have noindependent existence outside our thoughts.

One of the main purposes of Kant's idealist scheme was to

firmly establish the conditions and limits of human knowledge as

a way of guarding against Hume's radical scepticism. For Hume

had persuasively argued that there was no way of demonstrating a

certain connection between our perceptions and the objects of our

experience. This not only undermined the claims of science to

know an objective, external world, but also brought into serious

doubt rationalist affirmations concerning knowledge of a moral

and religious nature. Prompted by Hume's sceptical arguments,

Kant maintained that it was important to distinguish between

knowledge of phenomena - derived largely from the senses and

seemingly subject to a causal determinism - and practical or

moral knowledge, created by human beings as free agents who are

able to make unconditioned moral choices and determine spiritual

goals.(50)

Here Kant was suggesting an important distinction - later

seized upon by Coleridge and made the linch-pin of his own

idealist moral and political philosophies (see above, pp. 167-

174) - between an empirical world apprehended by the faculty of


51 On Rousseau's influence on Kant, see Cassirer, Kant's Life,pp. 86-90, 235-6.

52 Rousseau, Discourse, pp. 169-70, cited in Cristaudo, Metaphysics ofScience and Freedom, p. 110. Cf. Hampson, The Enlightenment,pp. 197-8.

53 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 370, cited in Roberts, GermanPhilosophy, p. 34.

'understanding' ('Verstand') and a purely intelligible world

accessible through the faculty of 'reason' ('Vernunft'). In

expressing such a distinction in his philosophy, Kant had been

partly inspired by Rousseau who had similarly insisted that one

needed to make a strict demarcation between an ostensibly

deterministic world of phenomena that could be investigated by

experimental science and an autonomous sphere of human choice.(51)

In his famous Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1755),

Rousseau wrote that one should not view a human being as just a

kind of 'ingenious machine'. While physical science, he allowed,

might enable one to account for some of the seemingly mechanical

processes involved in perception and thought, it could not

explain the apparent freedom of human volition:(52)

for physics may explain, in some measure, the mechanismof the senses and the formation of ideas; but in thepower of willing or rather of choosing, and in thefeeling of this power, nothing is to be found but actswhich are purely spiritual and wholly inexplicable by thelaws of mechanism.

The moral and political importance of such a distinction in

Kant's idealism is made clear in his interpretation of Plato.

For Kant, the value of Plato's philosophy was that it emphasized

the human capacity to think beyond the limitations of experience.

Kant claimed that this was in fact what Plato had in mind by

putting forward the doctrine of 'ideas'.(53)

Plato made use of the expression 'idea' in such a way asquite evidently to have meant by it something which notonly can never be borrowed from the senses but farsurpasses even the concepts of understanding (with whichAristotle occupied himself), inasmuch as in experience


54 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 371-4, discussed in Roberts, GermanPhilosophy, p. 34. Cf. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 568/ B 596,A 570/ B 598.

nothing is ever to be met with that is coincident withit. For Plato ideas are archetypes of the thingsthemselves ... .

Unlike Plato, however, Kant did not see such supersensuous

'archetypes' as having an existence separate from the mind; they

were purely mental constructions. But this did not detract from

their importance. For it still indicated that reason, and not

sense-bound experience, could alone furnish a basis for ethics

and for politics. For Kant, moral ideals are found nowhere in

experience, nor is the political ideal of 'a constitution

allowing the greatest possible human freedom in accordance with

laws by which the freedom of each is made to be consistent with

that of all others'. Kant maintained that Plato had recognized

this important political function of 'ideas', and he recommended

that the Republic be read as an expression of a freely created

ideal to which political structures might be approximated, rather

than be judged as something fanciful and unrealizable.(54)

Kant's emphasis on the autonomy of the mind with respect to

experience was attractive to a younger generation of German

philosophers that included Fichte, Schelling, and Georg Wilhelm

Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). These philosophers, however,

thought that Kant's claims belied the idealist basis of his

project. If all that can reliably be known is contained in the

mind, they argued, it is nonsensical to posit a world of things

in themselves which lies outside the scope of mental activity.

This epistemological dualism, they believed, was misplaced in a

philosophy which aspired to be truly idealist. Moreover, the

reality of Kant's noumenal realm was open to question as well as

its utility. Kant had after all admitted that belief in its

existence was a matter of faith and not of certainty. He had


55 Cristaudo, Metaphysics of Science and Freedom, pp. 129-51.

56 See Fichte, Science of Knowledge (1794), passim.

57 Schelling, Ideas, pp. 173-5. My interpretation of Schelling isindebted to Robert Stern's Introduction to the Ideas, esp. pp. xv-xx.

argued that there was no way of proving the existence of a world

beyond phenomena, and especially of such metaphysical entities as

God, the soul and an afterlife. In other words, Kant had not

provided a definitive solution to the problems of scepticism and

psychological determinism. His idealist critics also complained

that he had not given any justification for the specific a priori

conditions he had presented as grounding empirical knowledge.

The Kantian project, then, was largely unfinished, and these

young idealists saw their task as one of completing it.(55)

The young Schelling's solution to some of the problems he

perceived in Kant's critical philosophy was set out in his Ideas

for a Philosophy of Nature. His reasoning, following Fichte,(56)

began with the idealist premise that the basis of all knowledge

must be the self. Now what fundamentally characterizes this

self, Schelling asserted, is 'an original activity'

('ursprüngliche Thätigkeit'). This, he claimed, is quite a

different position from that of philosophers who assume

'thinking' or 'representing' to be the primary mental attributes.

For thought and representation, he maintained, presuppose the

existence of something other than the self to be thought and

represented; so they cannot be primary. Nor can the passivity

implied in perception be an essential property of the self, as

passivity presumes the existence of something else in relation to

which this passivity is produced.(57) The most fundamental

attribute of the self, then, is its unrestricted activity.

Schelling argued that the encounter between this originally

active self and something other than the self is what gives rise

to consciousness. For, in such an encounter, the self becomes

aware of a limitation to its activity, and thus simultaneously


58 Ibid., p. 174.

becomes conscious of that which constrains it and of itself as a

constrained entity:(58)

it is only vis-à-vis the object that the originalactivity in me first becomes thinking, or self-consciouspresentation.

With the first consciousness of an external world, theconsciousness of myself is also present, and conversely,with the first moment of my self-consciousness, the realworld appears before me. The belief in the realityoutside me arises and grows with the belief in my ownself; one is as necessary as the other; both - notspeculatively separated, but in their fullest, mostintimate co-operation - are the element of my life andall my activity.

What is important in this account, and indicative of

Schelling's radical difference from Kant, is that nature here is

not viewed as something independent of the self. For Schelling,

the objective world of nature is inextricably bound up with

subjectivity: the subjective exists solely by virtue of there

being some object, and the objective exists solely in the

presence of a subject. Both are united in the mental act of

intuition. It was thus pointless to talk, as Kant did, of a

nature whose essence is forever beyond our grasp. According to

Schelling, it is only in our perception that nature exists for

us.

Schelling's idealist position appealed to Coleridge who

attempted to summarize it in the twelfth chapter of his

Biographia Literaria (1817). Here, Coleridge also drew upon

other early works of Schelling (in particular the 1800 System of

Transcendental Idealism) as well as upon ideas from Kant, Fichte

and Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819). The argument

presented by Coleridge was, he indicated, a 'transcendental' one.

Its purpose was thus to establish the primary conditions of

knowledge, and so provide a solid basis for a thoroughly idealist


59 CC,7, vol. 1, pp. 283-4. Cf. Schelling, System, p. 16. The text ofSchelling referred to here and in subsequent notes is Heath's Englishtranslation of Schelling's System.

60 CC,7, vol. 1, pp. 269-73, and editors' notes.

61 Ibid., p. 278.

epistemology. Like Schelling, Coleridge believed that this had

to be done without positing (like Kant) arbitrary, a priori

principles. Translating Schelling, Coleridge wrote,(59)

the transcendental philosopher does not enquire, whatultimate ground of our knowledge there may lie out of ourknowing, but what is the last in our knowing itself,beyond which we cannot pass. The principle of ourknowing is sought within the sphere of our knowing. Itmust be something therefore, which can itself be known.

Coleridge argued, following Schelling, that there must be one

ultimate principle or ground of our knowledge. This, however,

can consist in neither a subject alone nor an object alone, for

both terms presuppose the other. It must therefore consist in

something that is at the same time both subject and object, and

such an identity, Coleridge claimed, can only be found in the

self or, more precisely, in self-consciousness.(60) Now, this

proposition that self-consciousness is the ultimate ground of all

knowledge has significant implications. If it is true, Coleridge

explained, then in order to prove the reality of an external

world and the truth of our representations of it, one has to show

'that the spirit in all the objects which it views, views only

itself.'(61) Below, we shall see how Coleridge proposed to do

this. But what is important to note here is that he was joining

Fichte and Schelling in attempting to show that knowledge of

nature is not restricted (as Kant insisted) to the arguable

reality of 'phenomena' - of our perception of things - but, on

the contrary, has a secure foundation. Moreover, the self's

autonomy is guaranteed by this grounding of knowledge in self-

consciousness. For self-consciousness implies that knowledge is

only possible by virtue of the self's freedom to perceive itself,


62 Ibid., pp. 279-80.

63 This ethical goal of idealism is indicated in Fichte, Science ofKnowledge, pp. 40-2.

in other words, because of a will.(62) We have seen that this

autonomous activity of the self was deemed crucial for

establishing the possibility of a moral realm that is independent

of the seeming determinism of nature, and that Kant (in the eyes

of Fichte, Schelling and others) had not provided a secure

foundation for such autonomy. The idealism advocated here by

Coleridge thus had an objective that was not merely

epistemological, but also ethical.(63)

IV.5 Naturphilosophie and the Fundamental Characteristics of the

External World

While knowledge of the self could be quickly affirmed within

Schelling's idealist framework, it was far more difficult to show

that a world external to the self could be known with any

certainty. To show this, what had to be demonstrated was that

knowledge of nature was derivable from knowledge of the self.

This was one of the main tasks the young Schelling set himself,

and his arguments attempting this provided the basis for the

scientific programme of Naturphilosophie. In this section, we

shall see how Schelling's idealism sustained this dynamic view of

nature, promoted by Coleridge and others in the early nineteenth

century.

One of the most important discussions of the idealist

foundations of Naturphilosophie appeared in Schelling's System of

Transcendental Idealism. In the Biographia Literaria, Coleridge

famously duplicated and summarized some of Schelling's arguments.

The line of reasoning expounded by Schelling, and reiterated by

Coleridge, amounts to this. We have a firm belief in the


64 CC,7, vol. 1, pp. 258-60. See Schelling, System, p. 8.

65 CC,7, vol. 1, pp. 255-6; Schelling, System, pp. 5-6. From parallelpassages in Schelling provided in The Collected Works edition of theBiographia Literaria used here, it is apparent that Schelling'sdistinction between Naturwissenschaft and Naturphilosophie is notalways observed by Coleridge. While Coleridge seems to be consistentin his rendering of Schelling's term 'Naturphilosophie' as 'naturalphilosophy', he sometimes translates Schelling's 'Naturwissenschaft'as 'natural philosophy' and sometimes as 'natural science'. See the

(continued...)

existence of something outside our selves. But since the only

fact we can be certain of is our own existence, this belief in an

objective world must be taken to be merely a prejudice. Yet, the

feeling of certainty we have about the reality of an objective

world must, insisted Schelling and Coleridge, stem from something

in our experience. So, it in fact must derive from the only

absolute certainty we possess: that of our own existence. Even

more than this, they claimed, the objective world must in a sense

be identical with the self. 'To demonstrate this identity',

affirmed Coleridge in a close paraphrase of Schelling, 'is the

office and object of ... [transcendental] philosophy.'(64)

There were two principal ways of undertaking this task,

Coleridge (following Schelling) argued. In cognition, he

maintained, there is no separation between subject and object:

they 'are so instantly united, that we cannot determine to which

of the two the priority belongs.' To explain this union,

therefore, one must begin by speculatively separating these two

aspects of knowledge. One is then left with the choice of

explaining knowledge from the initial standpoint of the

subjective or the objective. If one begins with the objective or

'nature', one has to show how phenomena come to be

'spiritualized'; that is, how nature can come to be represented

by theories and laws constructed by the human mind. This,

Coleridge and Schelling claimed, is the task of speculative

natural philosophy (Naturphilosophie) as opposed to empirical

natural science (Naturwissenschaft).(65) The latter, they noted,


65(...continued)passages from Schelling in the notes in CC,7, vol. 1, pp. 253-4, 256.

66 See Kant, Metaphysical Foundations, Chapter 2.

67 CC,7, vol. 1, pp. 256-7; Schelling, System, p. 6.

68 CC,7, vol. 1, pp. 257-8; Schelling System, pp. 6-7.

had nonetheless already moved towards a speculative or

theoretical view of nature, as illustrated by the practice of

describing optical phenomena in abstract geometrical terms

(interpreted as constructs of the human mind). It could also be

seen in the treatment of magnetic and gravitational motions as

the product of immaterial or spiritual forces, which Kant had

insisted were the only way we could understand matter.(66) So,

there was good evidence that pointed to an identity between

nature and mind, and such evidence clearly indicated, Coleridge

argued - again drawing upon Schelling -(67)

that even natural science, which commences with thematerial phænomenon as the reality and substance ofthings existing, does yet by the necessity of theorisingunconsciously, and as it were instinctively, end innature as an intelligence; and by this tendency thescience of nature becomes finally natural philosophy, theone of the two poles of fundamental science.

The second way of showing the identity between the subjective

and the objective begins with the subjective element of knowledge

or the self.(68) We saw above how Schelling had begun to tackle

this aspect of his transcendental project in the Ideas for a

Philosophy of Nature, in which he showed how a world of matter

independent of the self could possibly be conceived as real from

an idealist standpoint. The chapter from that work in which he

put forward the argument outlined above in fact bore the title,

'First Origin of the Concept of Matter, from the Nature of

Perception and the Human Mind'. Having explained this, it was

however necessary to show how nature takes the particular forms

by which we represent it.



70 Cited in Schelling, Ideas, pp. ix-x. By 'dualism' here Schellingmeant polarity, and not an ontological dualism between matter andspirit.

Schelling's reasoning took the following lines. The basic

condition for the world to become an object of our experience is

(as we have seen) the encounter between the self and the non-self

- the encounter which also results in self-consciousness. Now

this encounter, he argued, which from a transcendental

perspective brings the world to our awareness, would have to be

seen as integral to the world once one leaves the transcendental

point of view. In other words, as the object on the

transcendental plane is the result of opposing tendencies, it

will seem to retain this same fundamental characteristic of polar

opposition from an empirical standpoint. 'The understanding',

Schelling wrote, thus '... presupposes [opposing activities in

matter understood as 'forces'] to be real, since they necessarily

proceed from the nature of our mind, and of intuition itself.'(69)

Force, then, is an essential property we attribute to matter,

because dynamic opposition is a primary condition of all our

experience.

Such an idealist derivation of force from the initial

conditions of experience supported the dynamic view of nature

that Schelling, following Leibniz, Kant and others, had begun to

advocate from the mid-1790s. Schelling, however, went further

than his predecessors by arguing that dynamic opposition, or what

he referred to as 'polarity', pervaded the whole of nature, and

we shall see below that Coleridge followed him in this. Thus,

'the first principle of a philosophical doctrine of nature',

Schelling affirmed in his 1798 On the World Soul, is 'to go in

search of polarity and dualism throughout all nature.'(70) In the

Ideas, he likewise insisted that polarity was ubiquitous in

nature, and to prove his point cited numerous instances of polar


71 Schelling, Ideas, pp. 65-7, 98, 114-21, 123, 128, 204-5, 268-70.

72 Ibid., pp. 215-16.

opposition between different kinds of attractive and repulsive

forces. He indicated, for example, that polarity is exhibited in

various chemical phenomena, magnetism and electricity.(71) The

deduction of force from the nature of intuition, however, does

not in itself explain how all these phenomena come to be

perceived by the mind as qualitatively distinct. Indeed, the

sensation of force that arises with intuition, Schelling

asserted, is indeterminate; from it one merely has an awareness

of the self's activity being limited: 'a consciousness of the

state of passivity that I am in.' One can envisage matter in

this 'wholly indeterminate relationship' with the self, Schelling

suggested, as being in a state of dynamic 'equilibrium'.

Perception of qualitative differences in matter would thus have

to come about, he argued, through a disturbance of this

equilibrium. Phenomena would then be differentiated from one

another by varying intensities of the polar forces by which they

are produced.(72) So, the dynamic process by which nature is made

intelligible to us would be repeated again and again, but at

increasingly complex levels.

The most basic of these levels, or 'potencies', as Schelling

called them, is that of matter as mass: the result of a

fundamental opposition in nature between attractive and repulsive

forces. Schelling saw this opposition as having the same

character as that between the self and the non-self in the

production of consciousness. Just as in the latter the original

activity of the self is unlimited until curbed by the non-self,

in nature the repulsive or expansive force is similarly unlimited

until brought into check by the attractive force. This dynamic

process repeats itself, and at the next level or potency in

nature, magnetic, electrical and chemical phenomena are produced.


73 Ibid., pp. 137-8.

74 This account appeared in an article on 'Thermo-electricity' forVolume XVIII (1830) of The Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, pp. 573-89, citedin Snelders, 'Oersted's Discovery', p. 235. See also: Stauffer,'Oersted's Discovery of Electromagnetism'; Gower, 'Speculation inPhysics', pp. 339-49.

At the third and final potency, the organic phenomena of

reproduction, irritability and sensibility are generated in

different degrees.(73) For Schelling, empirical confirmation of

such a speculative construction of nature would indicate that

there is in fact an identity between nature and the self and thus

that our 'spiritual' representation of nature is true. Nature,

then, would no longer need to be viewed as having an uncertain

basis in a hypothetical realm of things-in-themselves, and as

contingent upon imperfect, human faculties of sense and

perception. Evidence that dynamic opposition lies at the basis

of all natural phenomena would also show that there is a

fundamental continuity in nature: that the same principles can be

used to explain both inanimate and animate nature, and even

phenomena of a higher order, such as human intelligence.

Schelling's programme of Naturphilosophie was embraced by a

number of scientific thinkers who took up his recommendation to

look for polarity or dynamic opposition throughout nature. It is

well known, for instance, that Naturphilosophie was taken

seriously by physicists such as Hans Christian Oersted and Johann

Wilhelm Ritter, and seemed to bear some fruit. Oersted, for

instance, credited his discovery of the relationship between

electricity and magnetism to his faith in a universal law of

polarity in nature. In an account of his work in chemistry and

electromagnetism, Oersted claimed that he had shown 'that not

only chemical affinities, but also heat and light are produced by

the same two powers, which probably might be only two different

forms of one primordial power', and that he had been convinced

that 'magnetical effects were produced by the same powers'.(74)


75 Wetzels, 'Johann Wilhelm Ritter'. See also Gower, 'Speculation inPhysics', pp. 327-39.

76 Kertesz, 'Notes on Isis'.

77 Oken, Elements, p. 21. The Elements was based on the third edition(1843) of the Lehrbuch.

78 Ibid., p. 22.

Ritter, likewise, was led to discover the ultraviolet end of the

spectrum out of a conviction that a polar equivalent of infrared

rays, recently discovered by John Herschel, must exist.(75) The

scientist Lorenz Oken (1779-1851) advanced the cause of

Naturphilosophie in his influential journal, Isis von Oken (1817-

48), and in a number of major works developed a thoroughly polar

philosophy of nature.(76) His Lehrbuch der Naturphilosophie

(1809) was later translated into English under the title,

Elements of Physiophilosophy (1847). In this work, Oken declared

that 'polarity is the first force which appears in the world. ...

There is no world, and in general nothing without polar

force.'(77) He attacked a mechanistic view of nature, maintaining

that motion could only be accounted for dynamically, not

mechanically.(78)

A mechanical motion, which might be produced ad infinitumby mechanical impulses, is an absurdity. There isnowhere a purely mechanical motion; nothing, as it is atpresent in the world, has become so by impulse; aninternal act, a polar tension lies at the bottom of allmotion.

In the Elements, Oken proceeded to explain a huge variety of

physical, chemical, geological and biological phenomena, all

according to Schelling's polar framework.

The question arises as to why these followers of

Naturphilosophie were attracted to it as an alternative to the

prevailing scientific framework of the times. Part of the answer

lies in the promise of Schelling's programme to account for a

number of phenomena for which explanations were wanting or


79 See, for example, Cannon, Science in Culture, pp. 145-53.

80 See Schenk, European Romantics, pp. 14-21.

deficient. Newtonian natural philosophy had provided a

successful mathematical means of describing the behaviour of some

phenomena, but it had not been able to account for presumed basic

constituents of these phenomena such as atoms, immaterial forces,

and the aether. Schelling, on the other hand, had supplied not

only a coherent interpretation of force as the primary ingredient

of all natural phenomena, but also a way of solving significant

problems that had plagued modern scientific thought since

Descartes. For instance, how could mind and matter - two

heterogeneous substances - interact? And how could one explain

apparently non-mechanistic phenomena in living things, such as

growth and reproduction, not to mention intelligence?

Schelling's Naturphilosophie seemed to provide answers to such

problems.

Another probable reason for its appeal to scientific thinkers

was that it offered a total picture of nature at a point in the

history of European science when disciplines were becoming ever

more specialized and scientific knowledge was rapidly

advancing.(79) Indeed, in the accounts of their science, the

Naturphilosophen insisted that they were engaged in a search for

unity throughout the whole of nature. This was not to say,

however, that they passed over nature's differences and variety.

On the contrary, the Romantic movement - of which

Naturphilosophie is usually regarded as a scientific counterpart

- is noted for its fascination with the world's diversity and its

celebration of difference and individuality.(80) And, as

Hutchison has suggested, the Romantic search for unity in nature

stemmed from an acute and growing awareness of nature's


81 Hutchison, 'Idiosyncrasy', pp. 131, 161-2.

complexity - an awareness that produced a need to find order

within this complexity.(81)

Naturphilosophie was certainly attractive to the mature

Coleridge for all of these reasons. But, most of all, it

appealed to him because it offered a compelling, immaterialistic

alternative to the prevailing systems of natural philosophy. It

could be reconciled with a spiritual cosmology, and we have seen

that such a cosmology was essential to support the religious,

moral and political perspectives that Coleridge was advocating in

early nineteenth-century Britain.

IV.6 Dynamic Chemistry and Physiology in Britain

Coleridge's notebooks, letters and marginalia attest to his

serious engagement with the theoretical framework of German

Naturphilosophie, and its application by scientists such as Oken,

Oersted and Henrik Steffens to chemistry, physiology and geology

in particular. Yet there was also a new dynamic direction in

British science that was not explicitly building upon Schelling's

scheme of nature, and Coleridge recognized this. In particular,

he saw an important expression of such dynamism in the chemistry

of Humphry Davy (1778-1829).

Coleridge had in fact been a close friend of Davy, meeting

him in 1799 when the budding chemist was working as

superintendent of Thomas Beddoes' Pneumatic Institution near

Bristol. Apart from their common interest in science, Davy was

also a keen poet, and was even entrusted with the proof-reading

of the second (1800) edition of Coleridge and Wordsworth's famous

Romantic anthology, the Lyrical Ballads. Davy also established

lasting friendships with Thomas Wedgwood and Thomas Poole, both


82 See: Knight, Humphry Davy, pp. 21-2, 45, 48, 52-3, 181-2; Holmes,Early Visions, pp. 245, 257, 259-60, 273, 276, 297-8, 303, 312, 346.On Coleridge's scientific connection with Davy, see also Levere,Poetry Realized in Nature, pp. 20-35,, 78-9, 175-80, 189-91, 194-8.

83 See CN,1 (and editor's notes), entries 1098 and 1099: January-February 1802.

84 Holmes, Darker Reflections, pp. 107-8, 119, 130, 136-7, 267. Seealso Holmes, 'Coleridge Experiment'.

85 Ibid., pp. 129-30, 361. For some other interesting examples of this,see Holmes, 'Coleridge Experiment', pp. 314-15, 318-20. On some ofthe reciprocal influences and the friendship between Coleridge andDavy, see also Lefebure, 'Philosophic Alchemist'.

86 CC,11, vol. 1, p. 374, cited in Holmes, Darker Reflections, p. 361.That the electro-chemical metaphors here were specifically inspiredby Davy's work is not absolutely certain. But it seems plausible inview of Coleridge's continuing friendship with Davy after returningfrom Malta - leading up to Coleridge's Royal Institution lectures -

(continued...)

of whom were close friends of Coleridge.(82) When Davy went on to

lecture at the Royal Institution from 1801, Coleridge attended

some of his lectures the following year and took copious notes

that show a deep fascination with chemical phenomena.(83) Later,

in 1808, Davy helped arrange for Coleridge to give a series of

lectures on poetry at the Royal Institution. This lecture series

was important for Coleridge, as it marked the renewal of a public

career in Britain after his absence in Malta and Italy between

1804 and 1806. Holmes notes that these literary lectures also

led to an association in the public eye of the poet-philosopher,

Coleridge, with the scientist, Davy. Davy attended Coleridge's

lectures and later ones on Shakespeare and Milton in 1811-12 at

the London Philosophical Society.(84) Coleridge's contact with

Davy and the latter's chemistry, Holmes suggests, influenced some

of Coleridge's important formulations on the character of

aesthetic perception and the human mind.(85) For example, in an

1814 essay on the fine arts, Coleridge described in dynamic terms

characteristic of Davy's electro-chemical experimentation what he

saw as an exemplary blending of energy and formal, rule-bound

composition in Raphael's fresco 'Galatea'. This painting

exhibited, Coleridge maintained,(86)


86(...continued)and his ongoing interest in Davy's chemical discoveries.

87 Davy, Works, vol. 4, p. 46.

88 Knight, Transcendental Part of Chemistry, pp. 47-8, 50-3, 67-70;idem, Humphry Davy, pp. 39-40, 58. See also Gower, 'Speculation inPhysics', p. 325. While observing that the origin of the youngDavy's earliest dynamic pronouncements in 1796 is somewhat of apuzzle, Levere argues that Davy's overall dynamic view of matter hadits basis in a Newtonian tradition of atoms and forces, and notGerman philosophy. Levere, Affinity and Matter, chapter 2, esp.pp. 25-34. But Davy would have encountered German ideas throughBeddoes who had the most recent German philosophical and scientificbooks and periodicals in his extensive library and had reviewed manyof these. See Stansfield, Thomas Beddoes, pp. 48-9, 93-4, 115-18,139-40, 188, 222-3. We have already seen that Beddoes wasinstrumental in encouraging Coleridge to visit Germany in 1798-99, atrip that was crucial in Coleridge's developing interest in Germanthought (see above, p. 103). It was after this trip that Coleridgemet Davy at the Pneumatic Institution. Levere notes that Beddoesalso rejected imponderable fluids in chemistry in favour of forces.Levere, Poetry Realized in Nature, p. 60.

the balance, the perfect reconciliation, ... betweenthese two conflicting principles of the FREE LIFE, and ofthe confining FORM! How entirely is the stiffness thatwould have resulted from the obvious regularity of thelatter, fused and (if I may hazard so bold a metaphor)almost volatilized by the interpenetration and electricalflashes of the former.

Especially important here is that Davy seems to have shared

Coleridge's conviction that nature's activity had an immaterial,

dynamic basis. In his Elements of Chemical Philosophy (1812),

for instance, Davy argued that 'the various forms of matter, and

the changes of these forms, depend upon active powers, such as

gravitation, cohesion, calorific repulsion or heat, chemical

attraction, and electrical attraction'.(87) Davy also held the

view that the forces underlying material phenomena were polar in

character, a view that seems to have come from his experimental

work with electricity. Knight suggests that this polar view of

nature may also have been stimulated by early discussions with

Coleridge about Naturphilosophie.(88) Coleridge certainly

perceived a harmony between his and Davy's views, as is made


89 CL,3, p. 38: to Dorothy Wordsworth, 24 November 1807.

90 Berman, Royal Institution, chapters 2 & 3.

91 See: Gascoigne, Science in the Service of Empire, esp. pp.116-17,128-9; Berman, Royal Institution, pp. 15-17, 40-7, 49-68.

clear in a letter of 1807. According to Coleridge, Davy

thought(89)

that there is only one power in the world of the senses;which in particles acts as chemical attractions, inspecific masses as electricity, & on matter in general,as planetary Gravitation. ... when this has been proved,it will then only remain to resolve this into some Law ofvital Intellect - and all human Knowledge will be Scienceand Metaphysics the only Science.

Davy's dynamic science, importantly, had an explicitly

political application. Berman has shown that the Royal

Institution, where Davy lectured and conducted research from 1801

to 1812, was patronized during this period by the aristocratic,

landowning classes. They hoped that the Institution would lead

to improvements in agriculture, related industries such as

tanning, and mining - commercial activities, to be sure, but all

associated with the landed interest.(90) Davy's science might

thus be seen as part of an 'Establishment science', in contrast

to the 'Jacobin science' canvassed in Chapter II. Indeed, close

links had deliberately been forged between such an 'Establishment

science' and the state by Joseph Banks, President of the Royal

Society from 1778 to 1820 and intent on exercising his sway over

science in order to promote the interests of imperial Britain and

the ruling, landed classes. Banks, himself a landowner, had in

fact helped set up the Royal Institution for this purpose - to

demonstrate that science could be harnessed to the economic and

political goals of the Establishment.(91) The mature Coleridge

would certainly have approved of the political tenor of the

Institution and its science at this time.


92 CC,4, vol. 1, pp. 470-1. Coleridge had met Wollaston socially, butdid not know him well. See CC,5, p. 410: to Thomas Allsop, earlyFebruary 1825. Coleridge also knew Hatchett personally. In anotebook entry, he reminded himself 'to ask Mr Hatchett' about theweight of a 'purple powder' produced by an electrical dischargethrough gold wire. This query was based on Coleridge's reading ofWilliam Thomas Brande's just published Manual of Chemistry (1819).Brande lectured at the Royal Institution and was Hatchett's son-in-law and former student. CN,4, entry 4564: June 1819, and editor’snote.

93 Knight, Humphry Davy, pp. 7-8, 46-8, 53, 74-7, 114, 135; Berman,Royal Institution, pp. 28, 89, 131; Levere, Poetry Realized inNature, pp. 52-4.

94 CC,4, vol.1, pp. 470-1. CN,4, entry 4929: 1822/1827. Cf. Levere,Poetry Realized in Nature, pp. 176-8. Elsewhere in The Friend,Coleridge indicated that 'Water is neither Oxgen nor Hydrogen, noryet is it a commixture of both; but the Synthesis or Indifference ofthe two ... It is the object of the mechanical atomistic Psilosophyto confound Synthesis with synartesis, or rather with mere juxta-

(continued...)

In the revised, 1818 edition of The Friend, Coleridge

explicitly praised Davy, future president of the Royal Society,

and Davy's chemical colleagues, Charles Hatchett and William Hyde

Wollaston, for pursuing a dynamic direction in their science: for

having shown that natural phenomena were the result of immaterial

principles or 'powers', ultimately depending upon a single

'law'.(92) Hatchett and Wollaston were both prominent chemists

and friends of Davy. In particular, Davy was connected with

Hatchett through the Royal Institution and the Society for Animal

Chemistry of which both Davy and Hatchett were founding

members.(93) These three chemists had revealed, Coleridge

indicated, the fundamental chemical constitution of such

phenomena as 'water and flame, the diamond, the charcoal, and the

mantling champagne, with its ebullient sparkles'. In a later

note (where he also cited this passage) Coleridge suggested that

chemical decomposition of 'the Flame of the Gas Light, and the

River-Water' lent weight to the idea that phenomena were the

product of underlying, dynamic principles of combination: they

were not the result of mere mechanical addition of elements, but

were produced by a dynamic 'synthesis' of these elements into

something totally different.(94) The dynamic origin of phenomena


94(...continued)position of Corpuscles separated by invisible Interspaces.' CC,4,vol. 1, p. 94. 'Psilosophy' is Coleridge's coinage, meaning bare ormere (psilos) wisdom (sophia). The O.E.D. gives no listing for'synartesis'.

95 Davy, Works: vol. 5, pp. 170-5, 220-2, 478-91; vol. 4, pp. 221-32.

96 CC,12, vol. 1, p.572: marginalia on the 1781 English edition of TheWorks of Jacob Behmen, the Teutonic Theosopher, cited in Levere,Poetry Realized in Nature, p. 35. At this time Coleridge and Davywere certainly no longer on the same intimate terms. For, in anotebook entry of 1814 or 1815, Coleridge wrote that he and Davy had'been for many years at a great distance from each other', thoughthere had been 'no real breach of Friendship'.

was also demonstrated for Coleridge by recent investigations

showing that diamond was a form of carbon. In papers published

in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, and in

his Elements of Chemical Philosophy, Davy had described

experiments which proved that charcoal and diamond were composed

of the same 'carbonaceous principle'. For upon combustion both

absorbed approximately the same amount of oxygen and gave off

'carbonic acid' (carbon dioxide).(95) For Coleridge, Davy's

research on the diamond was evidence for the dynamic idea that

the qualitative differences in phenomena were due to forces

beyond matter, for the same matter could have very different

properties.

So, for Coleridge, the work of the British chemists

exemplified the transition from mechanism to dynamism. Yet he

had his reservations. In a note of 1812 or afterwards, he had

indicated that he felt Davy did not completely espouse a dynamic

view of nature, lamenting that his friend had become 'an

Atomist'.(96) That dynamism in British chemistry was in danger of

losing out to atomism and materialism was later expressed in

Coleridge's 1817 letter to Lord Liverpool (discussed above, pp.

187-191). There Coleridge first praised 'the late successful

researches of the Chemists', but immediately went on to bemoan

'the recent relapse ... of the Chemists to the atomistic scheme,

and the almost unanimous acceptance of Dalton's Theory in


97 CL,4, p. 760: to Lord Liverpool, 28 July 1817. See also CN,4 (andeditors' notes), entries 4573, 4646: June 1819.

98 See Knight, Humphry Davy, pp. 75-80; idem, Atoms and Elements,pp. 18-21, 23-33.

99 Levere, Poetry Realized in Nature, pp. 77-8; CN,4, entry 4646: 1820.

100 Berman, Royal Institution, chapter 4.

England'.(97) Coleridge here was perhaps referring to the fact

that chemists such as Davy and Wollaston, whom he admired, were

prepared to countenance Dalton's work for its empirical

usefulness, although they did not accept the reality of Dalton's

atoms.(98) Since Davy and his colleagues were eminent figures in

British science, playing a leading role in the Royal Society and

the Royal Institution, this apparent endorsement of Dalton must

have seemed to Coleridge a severe blow for dynamism in Britain

and can explain his disillusionment with the British chemists in

his letter to Lord Liverpool. Levere has in fact noted

Coleridge's expressed disenchantment around 1817 and afterwards

with both the Royal Society and the Royal Institution, indicating

in particular that Coleridge objected to what he judged to be

materialistic tendencies in Davy's successor at the Royal

Institution, William Thomas Brande.(99) Coleridge's objections to

Brande and the Royal Institution probably also had another, more

explicitly political motivation. For Berman has observed that in

the years while Brande was lecturing at the Institution, from

1813 on, its scientific focus was becoming increasingly

commercial, and its governorship was passing from the landed

aristocracy to the new professional classes with strong

Utilitarian connections and a concern to bring about social and

administrative reforms.(100) Coleridge would no doubt have been

hostile to the Institution's growing utilitarian preoccupations

and new, non-aristocratic power base.

Coleridge's specific discontent with Davy is also revealed at

this time in the accusation that Davy's experimental work was


101 CL,4, p. 808: to C. A. Tulk, 12 January 1818. In marginal notes toworks by the Naturphilosoph Henrik Steffens, Coleridge claimed thatmuch of Davy's chemistry had been predicted by Steffens, so could beconsidered as 'plagiarisms'. See Levere, Poetry Realized in Nature,pp. 179-80. The same sentiments are expressed in CL,5, p. 130: toCharles Aders, December 1820. See also CN,4, entry 4560n.

102 CL,4, p. 761: to Lord Liverpool, 28 July 1817.

103 See, for example, CN,4 (and editors' notes), entries 4560-1, 4563-5,4577, 4580: June 1819; entries 4645-7: 1820; entry 4814: 1821.

unoriginal and redundant, for his chemical discoveries had

apparently been anticipated many years earlier by the theories of

Schelling and the latter's followers, and even by Coleridge

himself! The theoretical scheme of German Naturphilosophie,

Coleridge explained in a letter of 1818 to his Swedenborgian

friend Charles Augustus Tulk, enabled the solution of 'all known

chemical facts', many of which had already 'been discovered (&

far more accurately) before Davy's experiments.'(101) In his

letter to Liverpool, Coleridge complained more generally that(102)

since the year 1798 every experiment of importance hadbeen distinctly preannounced by the founders or restorersof the constructive or dynamic philosophy, in the onlycountry where a man can exercise his understanding in thelight of his reason, without being supposed to be out ofhis senses [i.e. Germany].

Nevertheless Coleridge continued to be interested in the findings

of British chemists and (as his notebooks attest) closely

followed their work while repeatedly measuring it against the

theoretical scheme of Naturphilosophie.(103)

So, how can we account for Coleridge's high praise in The

Friend in the very same decade for Davy, Hatchett and Wollaston?

The mature Coleridge's view of Davy in fact varied, and in 1823

we find him reiterating an earlier positive view of his that Davy

was 'the Father and Founder of philosophic Alchemy, the Man who

born a Poet first converted Poetry into Science and realized what


104 CL,5, p. 309: to Dr. Williamson, 11 November 1823. The earlier viewof Davy as 'the illustrious Father and Founder of philosophicAlchemy' was expressed in The Friend of 1809-10. CC,4, vol. 2,p. 252. In his unpublished manuscript, 'Logic', Coleridge similarlyreferred to 'Sir H. Davy, the founder of philosophic, as Wollaston ofscientific, chemistry'. CC,13, pp. 216-17. Coleridge here wasdiscussing Davy's research on muriatic (hydrochloric) acid, whichdisproved the Lavoisian position that oxygen is the principle ofacidity. See Knight, Transcendental Part of Chemistry, pp. 126-39.

105 Cf. Levere, Poetry Realized in Nature, pp. 68-81.

106 CC,4, vol. 1, pp. 493-4.

few men possessed Genius enough to fancy.'.(104) The criticisms

of Davy and the British chemists might best be explained as due

to Coleridge's deep disappointment that, while they were

fulfilling his hopes of a dynamic science in some respects, they

were not in others. For Coleridge, it seems, British chemistry

was still too embedded in a mechanistic, Newtonian natural

philosophical mould, and needed to follow more closely the

German, dynamic example. The Naturphilosophen, he believed, had

steered clear of atomism and other mechanistic tendencies.(105)

In the 1818 Friend, Coleridge went on to praise what he saw

as a recent native dynamic tendency in comparative anatomy and

physiology. The main proponent of this biological dynamism was

the eminent eighteenth-century surgeon and anatomist, John Hunter

(1728-1793). In a long footnote in The Friend, Coleridge claimed

that what was particularly important in Hunter's views was the

idea that life is due to an immaterial 'principle or agent' which

is independent of, and antecedent to, material organization.(106)

Hunter, in a Treatise on the Blood, Inflammation, and Gun-Shot

Wounds (1794), had challenged a view that life is found only in

organized bodies, a view that might easily lead to the conclusion

that life must somehow be the product of organization. For

Hunter, however, material organization was like a mechanism, so

could not possibly give rise to life: the organs had to be set in


107 Hunter, Treatise, p. 78.

108 Ibid., pp. 77-8. On Hunter's views, see Hall, Ideas of Life andMatter, vol. 2, pp.107-18.

109 See, for example, Zammito, Genesis of Kant's Critique, pp. 189, 191,203-10, 215-48, and above, pp. 208, 209 and Chapter II, passim.

motion by a vital 'principle' in order to fulfill their specific

functions.(107)

An organ is a peculiar conformation of matter ... toanswer some purpose, the operation of which ismechanical; but, mere organization can do nothing, evenin mechanics, it must still have something correspondingto a living principle; namely, some power.

The idea that life is due to a 'principle' or 'power' that is

independent of organization was subsantiated for Hunter by

consideration of the properties of blood. Blood, he claimed, is

'the most simple body we know of, endowed with the principle of

life'; indeed, blood nourished the organism and all its parts.

Yet, it did not seem to be an organized body, or to have the

capability of self-movement that is characteristic of organized

bodies. Clearly, then, the 'living principle' contained in blood

was independent of organization.(108)

Hunter here implied that his views about blood were

contentious in scientific circles, but it was not just as

'science' that such ideas were debated. For Hunter was

expressing his position in the context of a passionate debate

about mechanism and materialism, a debate in which many European

intellectuals were participating,(109) and that seems to have

become more urgent in the politically uncertain period following

the French Revolution. We have already seen (p. 70) that in the

1790s, the radical John Thelwall took issue with Hunter's 'Vital

Principle', arguing that life was a function of material

organization. We also observed that, for Coleridge and others,

materialism like that of Thelwall was closely linked to extreme

political radicalism. We shall see below that, some twenty years


110 CC,4, vol. 1, pp. 493-4. 473-4. See also Levere, Poetry Realized inNature, pp. 47, 92-3, 210.

111 Home, Lectures, vol. 1, pp. 1-23.

later, the issue of the nature of life was still debated and the

political implications of the issue were still apparent.

In The Friend, Coleridge claimed that the reality of Hunter's

'vital principle' was aptly demonstrated by the organization of

specimens in the Hunterian Museum, housed in the Royal College of

Surgeons in London. Hunter's anatomical specimens were so

arranged, Coleridge indicated, as to demonstrate the fundamental

relationship between apparently disparate, organic phenomena, a

relationship that could only be explained as due to the same

'principle' or 'power' operating in different species.(110)

Hunter's disciple and brother-in-law, the surgeon Everard Home,

described Hunter's arrangement and the principles upon which it

was based in some 1814 Lectures on Comparative Anatomy. Home

explained that the specimens in the Museum had been intentionally

set out to enable the viewer to compare the organs of different

animal and plant species, and to show the increasing complexity

of organs as one ascends the chain of being. The first series of

specimens were related to the means of motion in animal and plant

species, with the aim of exhibiting analogous structures.

Following this was a series showing the different organs of

digestion and circulation. Then came a series on the brain,

nervous system, and sensory apparatus. The next series showed

the protective coverings of animals, and the final series the

relationships between the generative organs of various

species.(111) For Coleridge, Hunter's museum of comparative

anatomy demonstrated that life preceded material organization,

because the same fundamental principles could be observed in the

similarity of anatomical structures across different species.


112 Abernethy, Works, vol.3, p. 53.

113 CC,4, vol. 1, pp. 474-5.

114 Levere, Poetry Realized in Nature, pp. 199-200. See CN,4 (andeditors’ notes), entry 4580: June 1819; entries 4645 and 4646: 1820.

115 In The Friend, Coleridge also praised the comparative anatomy ofGeorges Cuvier as another example of dynamism in science, claiming(with some satisfaction) that Cuvier was not of pure French stock andhad been educated in Germany rather than France. CC,4, vol. 1,p. 475. Later, in his Aids to Reflection (1825), Coleridge again

(continued...)

Much the same conclusion had been expressed by another

prominent follower of Hunter, the surgeon John Abernethy, who

championed Hunter's views in lectures at the Royal College of

Surgeons. In some of these, published in 1814 as An Enquiry into

the Probability and Rationality of Mr. Hunter's Theory of Life,

Abernethy argued,(112)

in surveying the great chain of living beings, we findlife connected with a vast variety of organisation, yetexercising the same functions in each; a circumstancefrom which we may ... naturally conclude, that life doesnot depend on organisation. Mr. Hunter, who so patientlyand accurately examined the different links of this greatchain, which seems to connect even man with the commonmatter of the universe, was of this opinion.

The dynamic direction in comparative anatomy and physiology

suggested by Hunter, Coleridge announced in The Friend, had been

fruitfully pursued by Abernethy, Home and Charles Hatchett.(113)

Levere has indicated that Coleridge was especially impressed by

Hatchett's chemical analyses of organic substances, such as

albumen, shell and bone. In these analyses, Coleridge found

evidence for a dynamic development in nature from the inorganic

through to the organic.(114)

Coleridge clearly was excited about communicating his support

in The Friend for the British chemists and surgeons, because

their work showed that dynamic natural philosophy already had

distinguished supporters in Britain, so ought to be taken

seriously.(115) Their research, moreover, provided compelling


115(...continued)publicly praised Davy, Hunter and Hatchett, along with Oersted andthe Swedish chemist, Jöns Jacob Berzelius, as illustration of a newdynamic direction in science. CC,9, pp. 395, 397.

116 CC,11, vol. 1, p. 481.

evidence for the theoretical programme of Naturphilosophie which

Coleridge increasingly used to formulate his own dynamic account

of nature.

IV.7 Coleridge's Dynamic Theory of Life

Coleridge's adherence to Schelling's Naturphilosophie is

particularly evident in the Hints towards the Formation of a More

Comprehensive Theory of Life, first published in 1848, but

composed towards the end of 1816.(116) This work had two

principal, related aims. The first was to refute a mechanistic

notion, then being promoted in Britain and linked to political

radicalism, that life was the result of structural properties in

matter. The second was to show, using Schelling's framework,

that vital phenomena could be explained far better dynamically -

by assuming the operation of an immaterial principle, single yet

polar, operating throughout nature. Indeed, we shall see that

the Theory of Life aimed to demonstrate that nature was

fundamentally active, and that a universal principle or law of

polarity could account for the great diversity of phenomena,

including those of the human realm.

The Theory of Life began with criticism of tautological

definitions of life such as that of Marie-François-Xavier Bichat

who maintained, in a well-known formula, that 'life is the sum of

all the functions by which death is resisted'. Coleridge then

went on to discuss theories which defined life in terms of

characteristic vital functions such as the assimilation of

nourishment into bodily matter. These theories, he claimed,


117 Ibid., pp. 488-93.

118 Ibid., pp. 496-500.

119 See, for example, PL, pp. 339-43, which closely follows this sectionof the Theory of Life.

merely provided an account of properties found in living objects,

and failed to give a genuine definition of life in terms of a

'law' that would explain why life and its various manifestations

had come into being in the first place. He insisted that 'it is

the essence of a scientific definition to be causative ... by

announcing the law of action in the particular case, in

subordination to the common law of which all the phaenomena are

modifications or results.'(117)

Coleridge went on to briefly delineate some dominant trends

in the history of natural philosophy, beginning with the

Scholastics' occult qualities and substantial forms, followed by

Descartes' mechanical philosophy, and ending with eighteenth-

century developments in physics and chemistry.(118) The purpose

of this was to highlight what he considered to be an undesirable

tendency in philosophy - especially in that of his time - to

adopt one interpretation of nature to the exclusion of all other

perspectives. This was an argument he put forward elsewhere,(119)

and we noted above (pp. 91, 92) that such a predilection for

diversity was characteristic of Romanticism. Indeed, we saw that

Goethe made a very similar complaint about the undesirable

dominance of a single theoretical position in science.

Coleridge claimed that, in Scholastic philosophy, a dominant

speculative or non-empirical tendency had been present. However,

with the Reformation, a major beneficial change occurred and

'experimental philosophy was soon mapped out for posterity by the

... genius of Bacon'. But the tendency to view things from one

point of view only, Coleridge asserted, was again apparent in the

attempt - inspired by William Gilbert's discoveries - to explain


120 CC,11, vol. 1, pp. 496-8.

121 Ibid., pp. 499-500.

all nature in terms of magnetism. Subsequently, Coleridge

maintained, 'Descartes ... placed the science of mechanism on the

philosophic throne', after which Newton's mathematical

explanation of phenomena 'gave almost a religious sanction to the

corpuscular system and mechanical theory.' Thereafter, Coleridge

lamented, mechanism 'became synonymous with philosopy itself',

extending its authority into medicine, physiology and

chemistry.(120)

This dominant mechanistic view of the world, Coleridge

protested, still prevailed in the early nineteenth century, and

was particularly evident in Lavoisier's new analytical chemistry,

which had 'reduced the infinite variety of chemical phenomena to

the actions, reactions, and interchanges of a few elementary

substances'. Coleridge was worried about the popularity of this

chemistry and about what he perceived as its influence in other

fields, especially in physiology, where its reductive procedure,

he complained, was being adopted.(121)

A mechanistic reductionism in physiology was dangerously

apparent, he believed, in the views of his countryman, William

Lawrence, whose 1816 lectures to the Royal College of Surgeons

had largely prompted Coleridge to write the Theory of Life. In

his lectures, Lawrence had criticized the opinion of his former

mentor, John Abernethy, that life was produced by a vital

principle which, Abernethy suggested, took the form of an

electrical fluid. Lawrence maintained that life should instead

be explained as the product of physical and chemical

organization. Coleridge took sides with Abernethy in the ensuing

dispute with Lawrence, not only because he disapproved of

Lawrence's outspoken materialism, but also because he strongly

objected to Lawrence's liberal politics, and saw the two issues


122 See: Levere, Poetry Realized in Nature, pp. 46-52; Desmond, Politicsof Evolution, pp. 117-21, 255-7.

123 CC,11, vol. 1, pp. 501-2.

124 CL,4, p. 809: to C. A. Tulk, 12 January 1818.

as interconnected. Although Abernethy's appeal to a

materialistic vital principle was also problematical for

Coleridge, he would have approved of Abernethy's political

conservatism and expressed sympathies for a science that

harmonized with religion. The political stakes in the debate

quickly became explicit in its subsequent episodes. Lawrence was

accused of being in league with French scientists and of

importing a radical ideology into Britain.(122) While Coleridge

himself did not directly attack Lawrence's politics, his siding

with Abernethy and the conservatives was a plain indication that

he too was specifically concerned about the debate's political

implications.

Coleridge's repudiation in the Theory of Life of Lawrence's

position was succinct. It was nonsense, Coleridge asserted, to

argue that life was the product of organized structure when the

latter clearly was an attribute of life. He then attacked those

who postulated vital 'fluids and ethers of all kinds, magnetical,

electrical, and universal' for similarly putting the cart before

the horse - the activity of such agencies was part of the

phenomenon to be explained.(123) This was in fact the problem

Coleridge saw in Abernethy's electrical fluid, though he here

could not afford to criticize his ally against Lawrence.

Privately, however, he admitted that he had complained to

Abernethy that such fluids merely 'solved Phaenomena by

Phaenomena that immediately become part of the Problem to be

solved'.(124) Nevertheless, Coleridge went on in the Theory of

Life to argue that it was justifiable to view 'the power of life'

as analogous to 'the powers which manifest themselves to us under

certain conditions in the forms of electricity, or chemical


125 CC,11, vol. 1, p. 503.

126 Ibid., pp. 504-5.

127 Ibid., pp. 507-8. Coleridge similarly argued against Lawrence thatthe presence of basic material properties such as cohesion andelasticity in animal bodies was sufficient to show that there was nofundamental discontinuity between the supposedly inorganic andorganic realms. Ibid., pp. 511-12.

attraction'. The value of the analogy, he maintained, of course

had to be put to the test, and we shall see that this was one of

the tasks he proposed to accomplish in the Theory of Life.(125)

Having dealt with what he regarded as the chief inadequacies

of a materialistic account of life, Coleridge went on to outline

his own position. A definition of life, he began, would have to

'consist in the reduction of the idea of Life to its simplest and

most comprehensive form or mode of action'. Such a definition

would then be tested by applying it to increasingly complex

instances of phenomena.(126) He suggested that the phenomena

examined would not be confined to organic nature, but would also

include the inorganic world. The reason for this, he indicated,

was that there were no good grounds for assuming that the active

properties found in seemingly inanimate objects were different in

kind from those found in living things. There was a fundamental

likeness, he contended, between the 'irritability' of metals

apparent in galvanic processes, the stimulability of primitive

organisms such as fungi or lichens, and the 'excitability' of

human organisms.(127) All of them displayed that immaterial

'natural force' promoted by Leibniz in the Specimen dynamicum.

The difference between them was simply one of degree.

Here Coleridge was employing terminology derived from two

major, eighteenth-century, scientific figures: the Swiss

physician and anatomist, Albrecht von Haller, and the Scottish

physician, John Brown. Haller had investigated muscle fibres and

discovered that they possessed an inherent tendency to contract,

independently of the nervous system. He called this tendency


128 Gasking, Experimental Biology, pp. 93-4.

129 Neubauer, 'Dr. John Brown', pp. 369-70.

130 See Stansfield, Thomas Beddoes, pp. 24-5, 109, 138, 172.

131 Levere, Poetry Realized in Nature, pp. 202-3. On the influence ofBrown on Schelling, see: Schelling, University Studies, pp. 135,139-40; Tsouyopoulos, 'John Brown's Ideas', pp. 65, 67-72; Neubauer,'Dr. John Brown', pp. 372-3, 375-8.


'irritability'.(128) Brown had argued that the chief property of

life was 'excitability': the innate propensity of an organism to

be stimulated into action by external or internal factors.

Brown's medical fame rested on his claim that stimulation of the

organism must be neither too great nor too little in order for it

to maintain health. Most physiological complaints, he argued,

were due to understimulation, and he recommended remedies that

bolstered the organism, in contrast to devitalizing treatments

such as bloodletting typically used at the time.(129) Coleridge

probably had encountered Brown's theories through Thomas Beddoes

who had adopted Brown's system to a degree, and had edited

Brown's Elements of Medicine.(130) But the use of Brunonian

terminology in the Theory of Life was more directly indebted to

Schelling who had incorporated Brown's theories into his own

system and had studied their application in medicine.(131)

It was Schelling's Naturphilosophie upon which Coleridge

principally drew to argue that a unique, immaterial principle of

life pervaded the whole of nature. In the Ideas for a Philosophy

of Nature, Schelling had claimed that 'there is a hierarchy of

life in Nature. Even in mere organized matter there is life, but

a life of a more restricted kind.'(132) For Coleridge, this

conviction that there was an ontological continuity between

inorganic and organic nature was significantly reinforced, as

Levere has shown, through reading the works of one of Schelling's

best known disciples, the Naturphilosoph, Henrik Steffens. For


133 Levere, Poetry Realized in Nature, pp. 161-2, 212, 217-18.

134 CC,12, vol. 3, p. 1055: 1818 marginalia on Oken's Lehrbuch derNaturphilosophie (1809). Oken, in this work's English translation,indicated that 'galvanism is the principle of life. There is noother vital force than the galvanic polarity.' Oken, Elements,p. 182. On Coleridge's concern about pantheism in Naturphilosophie,see also: CN,3, entries: 4429: August-September 1818; 4445, 4449:October 1818; CL,4: pp. 873-6, 883: to J. H. Green, 30 September1818; to C. A. Tulk, 24 November 1818.

Steffens had taken on board Schelling's assumption that polarity

was omnipresent in nature, and, along with many others, had

endeavoured to map out polar oppositions and their genesis from

the most basic kinds of phenomena through increasingly complex

levels of material organization.(133) We have noted that one of

the major attractions for Coleridge in such a natural philosophy

was that it did away with an indefensible dualism between matter

and spirit. Spirit, as manifested in vital phenomena and

intelligence, was not something inexplicably superadded to

matter: it was present in the activity of nature from the lowest

stages of organization, in what was commonly considered to be

inanimate matter, up to the highest level of physiological and

psychological organization in the human species. Coleridge here

had a compelling alternative to materialistic natural

philosophies.

There was of course a danger that such a philosophy be

construed as a variety of hylozoism that dispensed with the need

for a divine Creator, or as a pantheistic conflation of spirit

and nature. Coleridge was aware of such tendencies and detected

them in the Naturphilosophen. Oken, for example, had maintained

that 'God's act of self-manifestation' was the first instance of

polarity. Taking issue with this, Coleridge wrote, 'here lies

the fundamental Falsity of the Natur-philosophie. - It places

Polarity in the Eternal, in God. All its other Errors are

consequences of this.'(134) Nevertheless, he regarded the basic

scheme of Schelling and Steffens as not incompatible with


135 CC,11, vol. 1, p. 503.

136 Ibid., p. 510.

137 See Levere, Poetry Realized in Nature, pp. 217, 264.

138 See Lovejoy, Chain of Being, pp. 62-3. Lovejoy points out, however,that the Plotinic creation occurs in a descending order, beginningwith the most spiritually evolved forms toward increasingly materialforms. By contrast, the Naturphilosophen viewed the creative processof the Absolute as proceeding from simpler to ever more complexforms. Ibid., pp. 316-26.

Christianity. For God, Coleridge believed, was undoubtedly 'the

ground or cause' of nature's activity.(135)

The definitions of life that Coleridge put forward in his

work were primarily derived from Schelling and Steffens, though

also apparently inspired by Coleridge's reading of earlier, non-

mechanistic cosmologies. 'The most comprehensive formula to

which the notion of life is reducible,' Coleridge asserted,

'would be that of the internal copula of bodies, or (if we may

venture to borrow a phrase from the Platonic school) the power

which discloses itself from within as a principle of unity in the

many.' He went on to 'define life as the principle of

individuation, or the power which unites a given all into a whole

that is presupposed by all its parts.'(136) The central idea

being expressed here is that 'life' is an immaterial 'principle'

or 'power' in nature that produces new, independent entities by

inwardly joining previously distinct elements. The idea of

'individuation', Levere indicates, is found in Schelling and

Steffens. But there are also resonances in the first formulation

above, as Coleridge himself notes, with a Neoplatonic contrast

between unity and multiplicity: the one and the many.(137)

Indeed, the idea of there being a fundamental, unitary tendency

that is productive of the variety found in nature bears a

resemblance to the Neoplatonic concept of the 'One' or the 'Good'

which, by its very perfection, spills over into the world and

creates the multiplicity of forms there found.(138)


139 CC,11, vol. 1, pp. 512-16.

140 Ibid., p. 518.

141 Ibid., pp. 518-20.

Coleridge went on to indicate how the principle of life or

'tendency to individuation' would result in different forms in

nature, with individuality - gauged by 'the number and

interdependence of the parts' in an entity - progressively

increasing. The individuating tendency would be minimal, he

claimed, in the lowest degree of nature, exemplified by metals.

It would gradually increase through the next level, typified by

crystals, and through the following one, characterized by peat

and corals. This latter stage, he indicated, was a bridge to the

animal and plant worlds of the final stage, where individuation

would intensify and reach an apex in the human organism.(139)

Having sketched out how the individuating tendency of life

would work, Coleridge announced that 'its most general law' was

'polarity, or the essential dualism of Nature, arising out of its

productive unity, and still tending to reaffirm it, either as

equilibrium, indifference, or identity.'(140) This was a

recognizable restatement of Schelling's idealist derivation of

natural philosophy. Just as polar opposition is necessary to

check the pre-conscious self's primordial active tendency, it is

similarly required in nature to curb an originally indeterminate

activity. We observed above that in the general scheme proposed

here, new kinds of phenomena are produced whenever nature's

intrinsic activity is constrained by an opposing tendency. Out

of such an opposition a new 'identity' or 'synthesis' emerges,

and nature is then in a state of dynamic 'equilibrium' or

'indifference'. The intrinsic activity of nature subsequently

reasserts itself only to be curtailed at the following stage in

another synthesis, and so on.(141) 'Life', Coleridge wrote at the

end of his Theory of Life, 'supposes a positive or universal


142 Ibid., p. 557.

143 Levere, Poetry Realized in Nature, p. 44.

144 Holmes, Darker Reflections, pp. 450, 465, 469, 488, 503, 539, 548,550, 555; Sloan, 'Edge of Evolution', pp. 17-18.

145 From 'Joseph Henry Green's Introductory Hunterian Lecture on theComparative Anatomy of the Birds, 27 March 1827', in Owen, HunterianLectures, p. 310.

principle in Nature, with a negative principle in every

particular animal, the latter, or limitative power, constantly

acting to individualize, and, as it were, figure the former.'(142)

Levere has indicated that the central ideas put forward in

the Theory of Life were promoted from the mid-1820s by

Coleridge's eminent scientific friend, the surgeon Joseph Henry

Green (1791-1863) in lectures at the Royal College of

Surgeons.(143) Coleridge had met Green, together with the German

poet Ludwig Tieck, in 1817, and must have been delighted to

discover that the young surgeon shared his interest in German

philosophy. Indeed, in 1806 when he was only fifteen, Green had

spent three years in Germany, accompanied by his mother, with the

aim of furthering his education. In 1817, encouraged by Tieck

(and after meeting Coleridge), he went to Berlin for a brief

period to study German philosophy, and, especially, to learn more

about Schelling. Green became a close friend and confidant of

Coleridge. Together they discussed science and philosophy, and

Green was later entrusted with completion of the Opus Maximum.

From 1824 to 1828, Green held the important post of Hunterian

lecturer in comparative anatomy at the Royal College of

Surgeons.(144) The similarity between his thinking and that of

Coleridge as expressed in the Theory of Life is apparent from an

1827 lecture on the comparative anatomy of birds. There, Green

described 'the ascending scale' of organic nature as the result

of a fundamental tension between 'two great tendencies'.(145)


146 Ibid., pp. 311-12. Significantly, the young Richard Owen attendedGreen's lectures on comparative anatomy, and so would haveencountered these ideas derived from German dynamic philosophy.Indeed, in Owen's 1837 Hunterian lectures, we find him explaininglife as due to a divinely informed, 'organizing energy' or 'power'.Ibid., p. 220 et. seq. Rupke discusses the influence ofNaturphilosophie on Owen, noting that Owen saw polarity as animportant force in organic phenomena. Rupke, Richard Owen,chapter 4.

In each stage of the ascending scale of living beings wesee, with evidence increasing directly as the ascent, atonce the opposition and the harmony of the two greattendencies which must be regarded as the manufacturers orconstitutive agents in this great work of nature, namely- that of Nature tending to, integrate all into oneComprehensive whole, ... & on the other hand the tendencyto individuality in the parts ... .

Green went on to insist that Hunter's arrangements in comparative

anatomy illustrated the workings of dynamic 'powers' and showed

'that individuality and integration to a whole are the great

polar forces of organic nature'.(146)

So for Coleridge there was abundant empirical confirmation of

polarity in nature. Not only in chemistry and electricity, but

in physiology and comparative anatomy as well. All of this

appeared to him to demonstrate that the fundamental truths of

nature were discoverable a priori (through ideal construction)

and thus that the transcendental method of German

Naturphilosophie was sound.

This had two major implications that will be examined in the

following chapter. Firstly, it strongly suggested that an

idealist epistemology should be adopted to establish other kinds

of knowledge besides scientific knowledge, and we shall see that

Coleridge advanced such an epistemology in his mature politics.

Secondly, the success of Naturphilosophie implied that, if nature

is in fact determined by the same basic principles that govern

the conditions of human consciousness, there ought to be some

notable similarities between the natural and human realms. So,

the organic unity of nature expressing a tendency to


individuation in increasingly complex forms, and the principle of

polarity that underlies this tendency, ought to be exhibited in

human societies. We shall indeed observe that Coleridge saw such

tendencies derived from Naturphilosophie as operating in history

and politics. His dynamic philosophy, then, provided a

scientific sanction for his mature social philosophy.

p.266

1 Mill, Dissertations, vol. 1, pp. 397, 330-4, 358-63, 413-27, 436-42.

CHAPTER V: 'PRESERVING THE METHOD OF NATURE IN THE CONDUCT OF THE

STATE'— COLERIDGE'S DYNAMIC POLITICS

V.1 Introduction

Coleridge's dynamic politics was directly opposed to the

mechanistic one we saw him complaining about in Chapter III.

There we observed that he saw mechanism as sustaining liberal and

utilitarian philosophies based ultimately on self-interest.

Below, we shall see that he similarly used a dynamic philosophy

to support his own conservative politics in which much more

importance was given to social duties than to individual rights.

This political division between liberals and conservatives was a

crucial one in the early decades of the nineteenth century, and

was famously summed up by John Stuart Mill in an 1840 essay on

Coleridge. There Mill asserted that 'every Englishman of the

present day is by implication either a Benthamite or a

Coleridgean'. By this, Mill meant that everyone was either a

progressive like Bentham, whose politics were built upon the

individual pursuit of happiness, or a conservative like

Coleridge, emphasizing the subservience of individual interests

to the greater interests of the state.(1) This is of course

remarkably like Coleridge's characterization of the contrast

between the philosophies of a 'commercial G. Britain' and his

own, and we shall see that Mill's claim similarly reflected the

difference between a mechanistic politics - based on atomistic

self-interest - and a dynamic politics - emphasizing duties over

rights.

The principal aim of this chapter is thus to show how the

dynamic philosophy and its idealist epistemology sustained the

p.267Ch.V: 'The Method of Nature' p.267

mature Coleridge's politics. To begin with, empirical

confirmation of Naturphilosophie gave enormous credibility to its

epistemology. Since the latter bore fruit in science, Coleridge

believed that one ought also to adopt it for other kinds of

knowledge. Thus, we shall see below that he insisted the nation

should apply an idealist method in its social and political

philosophies: the true 'constitution' of states (he maintained)

could only be known via an idealist epistemology. Coleridge's

advocacy of an idealist approach in the sciences is well known to

scholars, but the political significance of this advocacy has not

been dealt with.

The dynamic philosophy also supported Coleridge's politics in

a more direct way, via the traditional idea that the laws or

principles that govern nature ought to be imitated by human

societies. This idea was prominent in Naturphilosophie.

Schelling had argued that the essential principles of external

nature were identical to those that underlay the conditions of

human consciousness. Proof that such principles operated in

nature, he added, strongly implied that they ought also to be

found in human societies - the direct products of human

consciousness. We shall accordingly discover that in Coleridge's

last major work, On the Constitution of the Church and State,

According to the Idea of each, the key notions of

Naturphilosophie are explicitly used to support his conservative

political agenda. He contended indeed that the fundamental

principle of polarity is exhibited in the state in the form of a

tension between a 'power' of 'permanence' - represented by the

landed classes - and a 'power' of 'progression' - represented by

the commercial and professional classes. An overbalance of one

of these two 'powers', he claimed, will undermine a nation's

political stability, so one must be especially careful to ensure


2 Kant's phrase is 'organisierte Wesen'.

that the forces of 'permanence' are not overwhelmed by those of

'progression'.

Another important dynamic idea, found in Naturphilosophie,

and applied by Coleridge to politics, was the idea of the

organism. Indeed, we noted above (p. 185) that Coleridge used

the idea to argue that states ought to possess the intrinsic

unity and interdependence of parts characteristic of living

organisms. The special 'organized' mode of being that

characterizes living creatures had been discussed by Kant,(2) who

explained it as a mental construct we impose upon nature to make

sense of phenomena that cannot be explained mechanistically.

Schelling and Coleridge, however, treated this idea as a real

feature of nature, and claimed that human societies too were

fundamentally 'organic'. This implied that the state, like an

organism, possessed an intrinsic unity, reality indeed. Thus,

the state as a whole was a genuine entity, so capable of

overriding the particular interests of individuals. The masses,

then, ought to be obedient, and relinquish their rights for the

greater good of the whole.

This chapter will begin, however, with Coleridge's arguments

in support of the dynamic philosophy's idealist epistemology,

particularly as expressed in his 1818 'Essays on the Principles

of Method'. These essays were mainly concerned with justifying

the use of such an epistemology in science, but we shall see that

they implied a much broader application of the same epistemology

to religion, politics and ethics. We shall go on to note that

this epistemology was distinctly elitist, a feature that was also

typical of Schelling's philosophy. For both Coleridge and

Schelling, only a very small minority could come to know the

scientific and political truths revealed through such an


epistemology. Democracy in the sciences and in society, then,

should be opposed.

In the sections thereafter, the application to politics of

the key ideas of polarity and the organism will be examined. We

shall see that Coleridge's dynamic insistence that cohesion in

matter is not purely mechanical, but due to polar forces of

attraction and repulsion was mirrored in his view of society.

The latter was not a product of individualistic self-interest,

but actively held together by opposing tendencies or 'powers'.

So, while admitting tension, dynamism thus emphasized unity, a

characteristic also obvious in the idea of the organism. For

Coleridge, then, the dynamic philosophy offered an attractive

alternative to a mechanistic model of nature and its 'Epicurean'

social analogue, in which there was no principle of connection or

intrinsic unity. Although the 'medieval' belief that society

should be viewed on the analogy with nature might seem unusual

for the time, we shall see that such a belief was shared by many

other conservative thinkers of the period, such as Burke and

Hegel, who also invoked a dynamic view of nature to sustain their

political positions.


3 A version of these essays had been published earlier in the year, asa 'General Introduction; or, A Preliminary Treatise on Method' in theEncyclopædia Metropolitana (1818-45). Coleridge was not entirelyhappy with this version because of alterations the publisher had madeto the arrangement and content of his treatise. See CC,4, vol. 1,pp. lxxxii-lxxxiv.

4 CC,4, vol. 1, pp. 464-75.

V.2 Coleridge's 'Essays on Method'

An important addition to Coleridge's re-worked 1818 edition

of The Friend was his 'Essays on the Principles of Method', which

outlined the idealist epistemological framework of his mature

natural and social philosophies, and, in particular, defended an

idealist approach in scientific investigation.(3) This defence is

significant, for we shall see that Coleridge was in effect

contesting the then popular empirical approach in the sciences,

thus insinuating that the latter was inadequate in all other

spheres of inquiry as well.

In these essays, Coleridge maintained that two principal

approaches have been used in natural philosophy. One derives

theories from observation. He disliked this approach, however,

arguing that it frequently involves an endless collection and

cataloguing of observational data according to superficial

classifications that ignore the true 'laws' governing phenomena.

This approach was illustrated, he claimed, in the botanical

system of Linnaeus, which, while fruitful, had resulted in an

unnecessary waste of energy. This could have been avoided,

Coleridge argued, had the Swedish naturalist been less obsessed

with observation and sought after 'a central phænomenon' by which

all other phenomena could be explained.(4)

The other main approach in natural philosophy involves a

direct apprehension or intuitive grasp of nature's 'laws',

without significant empirical input. Coleridge indicated that

such an approach was supported by recent important disoveries


5 Ibid., pp. 458-62.

6 Ibid., pp. 478-9. Coleridge does not mention Schelling here, butindicates that the crucial year for the discovery of this idea was1798 - the year in which Schelling's On the World Soul was published.The editor's note here that Coleridge was thinking about the work ofVolta and Laplace does not tally with this date.

7 Ibid., pp. 470-1.

8 Ibid., p. 463.

which showed that the key concepts of nature, such as 'force',

are 'deduced ... by the reason' 'independently' of experience.(5)

Furthermore, he maintained, genuine progress in the sciences can

only happen when observation is guided by a conscious search for

a universal 'idea' or 'law' in nature. So, he argued, the

phenomena of electricity could only properly be understood once

the law of polarity operating throughout the whole of nature had

been proposed.(6)

The question of course arises as to how such 'laws' are to

reach the human mind, and Coleridge answered this in a thoroughly

Platonic way. He began by referring to such knowledge as

unconsciously sought for, as if the successful mind is directed

by an 'instinct'. This instinctive seeking, he indicated more

precisely, is a 'striving after unity of principle through all

the diversity of forms'. It is akin to 'a feeling resembling

that which accompanies our endeavors to recollect a forgotten

name; when we seem at once to have and not to have it; which the

memory feels but cannot find.'(7) Here Coleridge was strongly

implying a kind of Platonic anamnesis - that the knowledge

spontaneously sought after is somehow present in the mind, though

not conscious. Indeed (he claimed) the mind has a priori

knowledge of the laws of nature, for both the contents of mind

and of nature originate in the same transcendent realm of

Platonic 'ideas':(8)


9 PL, pp. 333-4. On varying interpretations of Bacon in the eighteenthand nineteenth centuries, see Yeo, 'Idol of the Market-Place'.

What is the ground of the coincidence between reason andexperience? Or between the laws of matter and the ideasof the pure intellect? The only answer which Platodeemed the question capable of receiving, compels thereason to pass out of itself and seek the ground of thisagreement in a supersensual essence, which being at oncethe ideal of the reason and the cause of the materialworld, is the pre-establisher of the harmony in andbetween both.

Proof that the mind possesses such a priori knowledge,

Coleridge suggested (following Plato), is demonstrated by

mathematics. For the abstract relations discovered in

mathematics can be used to describe and predict concrete

phenomena in nature. This belief was enunciated by Coleridge in

one of his Philosophical Lectures of 1818-19, in which he must

have surprised some of his readers by his characterization of

Francis Bacon as one of the most important modern proponents of

an idealist methodology in science. 'The true Baconic

philosophy', Coleridge announced,(9)

consists ... in a profound meditation on those laws whichthe pure reason in man reveals to him, with the confidentanticipation and faith that to this will be found tocorrespond certain laws in nature. If there be aughtthat can be said to be purely in the human mind, it issurely those acts of its own imagination which themathematician avails himself of ... . Out of thesesimple acts the mind ... raises that wonderfulsuperstructure of geometry and then looking abroad intonature finds that in its own nature it has been fathomingnature, and that nature itself is but the greater mirrorin which he beholds his own present and his own pastbeing in the law ... while he feels the necessity of thatone great Being whose eternal reason is the ground andabsolute condition of the ideas in the mind, and no lessthe ground and the absolute cause of all thecorrespondent realities in nature ... and so Lord Baconhas told us, all science aproaches to its perfection inproportion as it immaterializes objects.

Coleridge was adamant that Bacon had an important place in

the genealogy of idealist ways of thinking that stretched from


10 CC,4, vol. 1, pp. 488-93.

11 CC,10, p. 13.

Plato to Kant and Schelling, and in his 'Essays on Method' he

dubbed Bacon the 'British Plato'. For Bacon, he argued, had

shown that the laws of nature were discoverable by purifying the

mind of all prejudices and illusions ('idols', as Bacon famously

called them) particularly those due to the senses. By such a

process one could reach a clear knowledge of the 'central

phænomena' in nature which, for Coleridge, were the 'objective'

equivalent of Plato's 'subjectively' apprehended 'ideas' in 'the

divine mind'.(10) Coleridge later summed this up in the following

way: 'that which, contemplated objectively (i.e. as existing

externally to the mind), we call a LAW; the same contemplated

subjectively (i.e. as existing in a subject or mind), is an

idea.'(11) Bacon, as Coleridge represented him, thus confirmed

what the Naturphilosophen had set out to demonstrate - that an

idealist epistemology provided a solid foundation for science.

V.3 The Politics of Idealism

To Coleridge, this approach to knowledge applied well outside

science. Yet verification of such an idealist epistemology

through science lent authority, he insisted, to its application

elsewhere. So he concluded that moral, religious, and political

questions must also be answered via such an epistemology.

This conclusion is clear from his complaints (canvassed in

Chapter III) about the way in which the sensationalism of the

mechanical philosophy lent weight to emerging liberal and

utilitarian philosophies with democratic tendencies. That on the

other hand, he saw the opposing dynamic Naturphilosophie as

similarly sustaining his own conservative, elitist politics is


12 CL,2, p. 760: to Lord Liverpool, 28 July 1817. Another example ofColeridge's belief that Schelling was reviving this 'eldestphilosophy' is found in an 1815 letter, in which Coleridge indicatedthat he was planning to write 'a philosophical History ofPhilosophy', starting from Pythagoras through to 'the revival of theeldest Philosopy, which I call dynamic or constructive as opposed tothe material and mechanical systems still predominant'. CL,4,p. 589: to John May, 27 September 1815. In his 1817 BiographiaLiteraria, Coleridge similarly claimed that the 'Dynamic Philosophy'was 'no other than the system of Pythagoras and of Plato revived andpurified from impure mixtures.' CC,7, vol. 1, p. 263.

13 CL,2, p. 762; Plato, Republic, 424.

plain from a number of his writings after 1815, when he seriously

began to promote the adoption of this idealist approach to

nature.

Illustration of the political importance Coleridge attached

to this idealist philosophy is provided, for example, in his 1817

letter to the prime minister, Lord Liverpool (also discussed in

Chapter III). For Coleridge insisted to his presumably perplexed

correspondent that the only remedy for the moral and social

disintegration generated by the mechanical philosophy was to be

found in 'the Dynamic Theory of the eldest Philosophy'. By this,

he meant the tradition of Plato and Pythagoras, revived by

Schelling and the latter's scientific disciples.(12) The

prevailing system of philosophy (he claimed) had a profound

effect on the social fabric of a nation: in the Republic, Plato

had warned against introducing novelty into the established

systems of education and culture, for 'the music and literature

of a country cannot be altered without major political

changes'.(13) Coleridge similarly exhorted the prime minister

that it was imperative for the political well-being of the nation

to turn to older systems of thought - those influential in

Britain prior to the impact of Locke. As we observed above in

our discussion of Coleridge's objections to the mechanical

philosophy (pp. 178, 179), what he was in fact advocating was the

revitalization of Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophies, a


14 CC,4, vol. 1, pp. 507-8.

15 Ibid., pp. 509-11.

revitalization he perceived as dynamic, and which he found in

Schelling's idealist Naturphilosophie.

Coleridge's presumption that an idealist approach, confirmed

by the sciences, ought to be applied in politics is also explicit

in the eight 'Essays on Method'. So in the last of these he

reiterated the complaints (noted in the previous chapter) about

the overbalance of trade in the nation and the accompanying

authority of knowledge derived from the senses. He urged that

Britain attach less importance to 'trade' and more to

'literature' - the latter reflecting the life of the mind - and

insisted that priority always be given to the cultivation of an

inner, spiritual reality. For 'under the ascendency of the

mental and moral character the commercial relations may thrive to

the utmost desirable point, while the reverse is ruinous to both,

and sooner or later effectuates the fall or debasement of the

country itself'. Coleridge acknowledged, however, that such

reasoning was likely to prove unattractive in a country that

prospered from trade.(14)

In this same essay, he repeated his claim that the 'laws' of

nature can be directly apprehended by the mind, because both have

their spiritual origin in God. He also cited excerpts from

Wordsworth's famous 'Ode: Intimations of Immortality from

Recollections of Early Childhood' (1807), to again indicate that

the discovery of laws in nature is akin to Platonic remembering -

to a process of rediscovering what has always been present in the

mind or soul.(15) The essay concluded with a paraphrase of

Plotinus: 'the material universe ... is but one vast complex

MYTHOS (i.e. symbolical representation)' of, presumably,


16 Ibid., p. 524. In an editorial note, Barbara Rooke rightly indicatesthat the idea expressed here is found in Plotinus, Enneads, 2.9.8,and 5.8.7.

17 The second edition of this work, published in 1830, is the onereferred to here. The first edition was published in 1829. One ofthe original intentions of this work was to argue against theproposed emancipation of Catholics from legal discrimination. Themain reason Coleridge and many others had for opposing emancipationwas their concern about the political influence of Rome, a foreignpower, on British affairs. In On the Constitution of the Church andState, Coleridge insisted on the importance of institutions that hadevolved on British soil. In 1829, however, (the year in which hisbook was published) the British parliament passed the CatholicEmancipation Bill which granted Catholics the right to vote andbecome members of parliament. On the question of Catholicemancipation in early nineteenth-century Britain, see Halévy, LiberalAwakening, pp. 239-309, esp. pp. 262-77.

18 This was very close to the old Stoic notion of a universal 'law ofnature', established by God throughout the universe and manifested inthe consciences of all humankind. See Sabine, Political Theory,pp. 149-50, 164-6. See also above, pp. 163-166.

19 CC,10, p. 12.

spiritual or divine reality.(16) For Coleridge, then, nature was

the 'material' manifestation of 'ideas' that constituted the

foundation of existence. Like Plato and Plotinus, he believed

that the phenomenal world issued from a more fundamental,

immaterial reality, not accessible to the senses.

Further evidence of Coleridge's advocacy of an idealist

method in social philosophies is provided in the most developed

exposition of his idealist politics: On the Constitution of the

Church and State, According to the Idea of Each, with Aids Toward

a Right Judgement on the Late Catholic Bill.(17) There he

maintained that there were social truths or 'ideas', comparable

to physical laws, which were inherent in human nature.(18) Such

'ideas', he insisted, had always existed in people's minds, and

could not be derived empirically. 'An idea', he explained,

was(19)

that conception of a thing, which is not abstracted fromany particular state, form, or mode, in which the thingmay happen to exist at this or at that time; nor yetgeneralized from any number or succession of such forms


20 Ibid., pp. 14-15. Cf. CC,4, vol. 1, pp. 173-5.

or modes; but which is given by the knowledge of itsultimate aim.

One such 'idea' was what Coleridge called 'an ever-

originating social contract'. He claimed that this idea was

implied in a universal belief in the dignity of all human beings:

that people ought not to be treated as things or 'means to an

end', but as 'always ... included in the end'. This fundamental

belief (he argued) prompted all human beings instinctively to

oppose any kind of servitude, although not all could articulate

the grounds for this belief. Referring to Rousseau, he condemned

the view that government is based on an 'Original Social

Contract'. For the 'sense of moral obligation' that can alone

sustain any such contract (he maintained) is ahistorical: it is

contained in 'the very constitution of our humanity, which

supposes the social state'.(20)

Here Coleridge was making two objections. The first is

suggested by his contention that a 'social contract' must be

'ever-originating'. So, any particular historical compact

between citizens cannot be eternally and universally valid, but

must vary with different circumstances and different societies.

This is yet another example of the Romantic opposition to

uniformitarianism and preference for diversity (see above,

pp. 91, 92). Coleridge's second objection was to the notion,

distinctly implied in the eighteenth-century conception of the

social contract, that a state is something artificial,

constructed by human beings out of a need for self-preservation.

He opposed such a notion, for (like Aristotle) he viewed the

state as something natural and saw sociability and morality as

inherent in human nature.


21 CC,10, p. 19.

22 Ibid., p. 13.

He went on to assert that the idea of a state's

'Constitution' had similarly been misrepresented, for this idea

too was not dependent upon historical precedent. On the

contrary, it was prior to and informed the course of history. It

was an intrinsic 'principle' of human nature, 'existing ... in

the minds and consciences of the persons, whose duties it

prescribes, and whose rights it determines.'(21) So, for

Coleridge, such social and political 'ideas' were not derived

from experience, but were ingrained in human nature. They were

informing ideals or 'ultimate aims', pre-existing in the human

mind and antecedent to the establishment of social institutions;

they were, furthermore, only approximately realized in the

sensible world.

V.4 The Idealist Elite

One of the important questions raised by this idealist view

of knowledge concerns the criteria for obtaining it. Coleridge

indicated that, while social truths were acknowledged by everyone

implicitly, only a minority could consciously apprehend and

articulate them. He asserted that 'it is the privilege of the

few to possess an idea: of the generality of men, it might be

more truly affirmed, that they are possessed by it.'(22)

But what distinguished those who were capable of grasping

'ideas' from those who could not? Coleridge's answer to this was

once again provided by referring to the important epistemological

distinction between the faculties of Reason and Understanding.

Knowledge of 'ultimate ends' or 'moral Ideas', he affirmed, could

only be obtained via the Reason. The empirical Understanding, on


23 Ibid., pp. 123, 59.

24 Ibid., p. 69.

25 Ibid., pp. 69-70.

the other hand, could only provide knowledge of 'such ends as are

in their turn means to other ends.' The value of the

Understanding, Coleridge indicated, was exemplified by the

technological advances being made in Britain. 'We live', he

declared, 'under the dynasty of the understanding: and this is

its golden age.'(23) There were, however, serious dangers in this

increasing reliance on the Understanding. For this faculty's

practical accomplishments had led to an erroneous belief that the

kind of knowledge it supplied was the most valuable kind.

Consequently, he warned, there had been a disturbing increase in

educational organizations with secular and liberal tendencies,

such as Nonconformist schools and Mechanics' Institutes.(24)

In order to counterbalance such tendencies, Coleridge

insisted that religious and moral education was necessary, and,

in On the Constitution of the Church and State, he proposed the

establishment of an elite body of intellectuals (very much like

Plato's 'guardians') which he termed the 'Clerisy' or 'National

Church'. Through their knowledge of the truths supplied by the

Reason, those who made up the Clerisy would alone be qualified to

guide the nation. Coleridge warned his political adversaries -

'the Liberalists and Utilitarians' - of the consequences of

ignoring the Reason. For social stability (he maintained)

depended upon the masses' being educated in the moral and

religious truths derived from this faculty and disseminated by a

political elite:(25)

You begin, therefore, with the attempt to popularizescience: but you will only effect its plebification. Itis folly to think of making all, or the many,philosophers, or even men of science and systematicknowledge. But it is duty and wisdom to aim at making as


26 Ibid., pp. 42-4.

many as possible soberly and steadily religious; -inasmuch as the morality which the state requires in itscitizens for its own well-being and ideal immortality ...can only exist for the people in the form of religion.But the existence of a true philosophy, or the power andhabit of contemplating particulars in the unity andfontal mirror of the idea - this in the rulers andteachers of a nation is indispensable to a sound state ofreligion in all classes.

Coleridge wrote that his 'Clerisy' was to be the 'third great

venerable estate of the realm', after that of the landed classes

and that of the entrepreneurial classes. It was to ensure the

harmonious co-operation of these other two classes, by

'cultivating and enlarging the knowledge already possessed, and

in watching over the interests of physical and moral science'.

One of the Clerisy's major tasks (echoing Burke's conservative

recommendations) would be 'to preserve the stores, to guard the

treasures, of past civilization, and thus to bind the present

with the past; to perfect and add to the same, and thus to

connect the present with the future'. More importantly, it would

also be responsible for providing moral education that would

enable the members of the society to understand their rights and

duties.(26)

From all of this it is plain that the mature Coleridge's

idealist epistemology, sustained by Naturphilosophie, was

radically elitist. Moreover, this elitism was as applicable to

scientific, as it was to political, knowledge. Such elitism was

conspicuous too in Schelling, and was especially evident in the

German philosopher's Lectures on the Method of University

Studies, delivered at the university of Jena in 1802. There, for

example, Schelling announced that 'the realm of the sciences is

not a democracy, still less an ochlocracy [i.e. rule by the


27 Schelling, University Studies, p. 30.

28 Ibid., p. 55.

crowd], but an aristocracy in the best sense of the word.'(27)

Revealingly, Schelling's views were very similar to those of

Coleridge regarding the social dangers of a misguided philosophy

and epistemology, and they explicitly foreshadowed the political

use made by Coleridge of the distinction between the faculties of

Reason and Understanding.

In his lectures, Schelling claimed that a true 'idealist'

philosophy cannot threaten the state because a state's

constitution should reflect the reality revealed by such a

philosophy. 'The constitution of the state', he declared, 'is

modeled on the constitution of the realm of the Ideas.' More

fully,(28)

in the [Ideas] the absolute is the power from which allthings flow, the monarch; the Ideas represent not thenobility or the people - for these two notions have noreality except as opposites of each other - but theentire body of the free citizens; the individual materialthings are the slaves and bondsmen. There is a similarhierarchy in the sciences. Philosophy lives only in theIdeas; it leaves dealing with particular real things tophysicists, astronomers, etc.

There were, however, schools of thought that falsely lay claim to

being philosophy and these (Schelling argued) were politically

dangerous. He asserted that 'there is one philosophical tendency

that is pernicious to the state and another that undermines its

foundations.' The first tendency placed 'ordinary knowledge' and

the 'common understanding' above 'absolute knowledge' and

'reason'. It thus ignored the true nature of reality which could

only be known via an idealist epistemology. This anti-

hierarchical tendency, Schelling maintained, had revealed itself

most clearly in France during the Enlightenment and the

Revolution. 'No nation', he claimed, 'has succeeded better than


29 Ibid., pp. 51-3.

30 Ibid., pp. 53-4.

31 Robinson, Diary, vol. 1, pp. 128, 166.

the French in this elevation of the ratiocinative understanding

above reason'. The consequence of this aggrandizement of the

understanding was 'ochlocracy in the realm of the sciences and

sooner or later ... mob rule in every other domain.'(29)

The second tendency that posed a danger to the state

(Schelling went on) was one that advocated utility as the sole

criterion for measuring human achievement. He complained that

such a criterion was likely to vary with changing notions of what

constitutes utility. Furthermore, this criterion (he indicated)

led people to give more value to technological inventions and

commercial ventures than to philosophy and culture. The self-

interest of governments indicated in such ventures, he warned,

encourages a similarly self-interested conduct in individuals,

and this results in a very superficial connection between a state

and its citizens.(30)

These criticisms bear a remarkable resemblance to those

Coleridge later made about the mechanical philosophy, and seem to

have had the same targets in mind: an anti-hierarchical,

'Jacobin' philosophy, and a utilitarian, 'Epicurean' morality,

both sustained by a sensationalist epistemology and mechanistic

science, and serving commercial interests. Judging by reports of

the diarist, Henry Crabb Robinson (who attended the philosopher's

lectures while studying in Jena in 1802 and 1803) Schelling was

overtly critical in his lectures of the same British, scientific

tradition condemned by Coleridge: that of Newton, Locke,

Priestley and Darwin.(31)

The elitist nature of Coleridge's idealist philosophy is

conspicuous in his other mature writings. In 1808, for instance,


32 CL,3, p. 141: to Daniel Stuart, 12 December 1808.

33 CC,7, vol. 1, p. 242. Here Coleridge also claimed 'that philosophycannot be intelligible to all, even of the most learned andcultivated classes. [For] a system, the first principle of which itis to render the mind intuitive of the spiritual in man (i.e. of thatwhich lies on the other side of our natural consciousness) must needshave a great obscurity for those, who have never disciplined andstrengthened this ulterior consciousness.' Ibid., pp. 242-3.

34 See Plato, Republic, 473-529. Knights also discusses this Platonicdimension of Coleridge's mature philosophy. See Knights, Idea of theClerisy, pp. 22-5, 48-9.

he wrote of his periodical publication, The Friend, that it was

not 'for the multitude of men; but for those, who ether by Rank,

or Fortune, or Offical situation, or by Talents & Habits of

Reflection, are to influence the multitude'(32) The Biographia

Literaria was similarly clear about a hierarchy in knowledge.

Not everybody was capable, Coleridge there insisted, of gaining

knowledge of the most important truths. For, just as 'the organs

of sense are framed for a corresponding world of sense ... the

organs of spirit are framed for a correspondent world of spirit;

tho' the latter organs are not developed in all alike.'(33) This

stance was of course very Platonic, and in the Republic we find

prefigured the kind of arguments being promoted in Coleridge's On

the Constitution of the Church and State and in Schelling's

Lectures on the Method of University Studies. Plato argued that

government ideally should be in the hands of a philosophical

elite, and in terms similar to those we find in the above

quotations, insisted that only those who have sufficiently

disciplined their minds should rule.(34)

V.5 'Polar' Politics

We have seen that, for Coleridge, scientific confirmation of

Naturphilosophie lent weight to the validity of applying its

idealist epistemology elsewhere, notably in politics. But this


35 Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle 3, ll. 1-2, 7-10, 13-14, 21-3, pp. 92-4;cited in Beach, Concept of Nature, p. 55.

philosophy also supported his politics more directly, through its

dynamic ontology. We noted in Chapter III (pp. 190, 191) that

Coleridge viewed the atomistic ontology of the mechanical

philosophy as buttressing individualistic doctrines of natural

rights. His specific complaint was that this ontology provided

no means of accounting for cohesion or organization in nature.

Thus, just as the mechanists' atoms were devoid of inherent

powers of combination and cohesion, liberal political theories

similarly represented individuals as isolated and independent,

without any inherent sociable tendencies. For Coleridge and

others, by contrast, a dynamic universe was inherently unified,

through opposing, yet complementary, forces of attraction and

repulsion, so could be used to sustain a more traditional picture

of society as having an intrinsic unity and common purpose.

This idea that a dynamic view of nature supported an ideology

that stressed social unity was not confined to Coleridge.

Indeed, Beach has offered some compelling examples of this idea

in other British literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries. Pope's 1733 Essay on Man, for example, presents a

view of matter as possessing inherent sociable tendencies that

operate through all levels of the 'chain of being'. Pope's view

enlists the Newtonian concept of universal attraction as well as

Cudworth's notion of a 'Plastick Nature', in order to advance the

idea that all nature's activity is directed toward the single

goal of drawing all things together in a harmonious whole.(35)

Here then we rest: "The Universal CauseActs to one end, but acts by various laws." ...

Look round our World; behold the chain of LoveCombining all below and all above.See plastic Nature working to this end,The single atoms each to other tend ...


36 Wordsworth, 'The Excursion', Bk. 9, ll. 1, 3-11, 13-15, Poems,vol. 2, p. 268; cited in Beach, Concept of Nature, p. 47.

37 CC,11, vol. 1, p. 518.

See Matter next, with various life endu'd,Press to one centre still, the gen'ral Good. ...

Nothing is foreign: Parts relate to whole;One all-extending, all-preserving SoulConnects each being ... .

In Wordsworth's 1814 poem, 'The Excursion', we similarly find

a view of nature as active and possessing an intrinsic tendency

to join all things for 'the general Good'.(36)

To every Form of being is assigned ...

An active Principle: - howe'er removedFrom sense and observation, it subsistsIn all things, in all natures; in the starsOf azure heaven, the undenduring clouds,In flower and tree, in every pebbly stoneThat paves the brooks, the stationary rocks,The moving waters, and the invisible air.Whate'er exists hath properties that spreadBeyond itself, communicating good ...

Spirit that knows no insulated spot,No chasm, no solitude; from link to linkIt circulates, the Soul of all the worlds.

The importance for Coleridge of the idea of unity in a

dynamic philosophy comes across clearly in his definition of

polarity in the Theory of Life, as 'the essential dualism of

Nature, arising out of its productive unity, and still tending to

reaffirm it, either as equilibrium, indifference, or

identity.'(37) What is different here from the recommendations of

dynamism by Pope and Wordsworth is the recognition of a tension

within nature, a tension that Coleridge also detected in the

human realm. For he used the idea of polarity to argue that a

state's cohesion or unity is a function of a fundamental balance

between conservative forces of tradition and progressive ones of

change.


38 Ibid., p. 534.

39 Ibid., p. 551.

The link between his natural and social philosophies was made

explicit in the Theory of Life. There he declared that polarity

was 'the law and actuating principle of all other truths, whether

physical or intellectual.'(38) He went on to explain how this

'law' brought about the increasingly complex forms of nature,

culminating in the human species, and, finally, the latter's

cultural products. The high point reached through

'individuation' or the polar production of new forms in the world

was illustrated, he claimed, in the various aspects of human

culture.(39)

In social and political life this acme is inter-dependence; in moral life it is independence; inintellectual life it is genius. Nor does the form ofpolarity, which has accompanied the law of individuationup its whole ascent, desert it here. As the height, sothe depth. The intensities must be at once opposite andequal. As the liberty, so must be the reverence for law.As the independence, so must be the service and thesubmission to the Supreme Will!

Here the imagery of tension and complementarity is

conspicuous, demonstrating how the idea of polarity thoroughly

informed the mature Coleridge's politics. Indeed such polar

politics is described in detail in On the Constitution of the

Church and State. Toward the beginning of that work, he claimed

that in every 'body politic' there are two fundamental opposing

tendencies or 'antagonist powers' of 'PERMANENCE' and

'PROGRESSION'. He likened these tendencies to the poles of a

magnet which, while opposed, are necessary and complementary

aspects of a single phenomenon. In a state, he argued, the

tendency to permanence is represented by the landed interest,

maintained from one generation to the next by inheritance. The

tendency to progression, on the other hand, is exemplified by


40 CC,10, pp. 24-5. Coleridge also referred to these latter classescollectively as the 'Personal' or 'Monied' interest, distinguishedfrom the class of landowners by the fact that their property isimpermanent and intangible rather than fixed and concrete. Ibid.,pp. 27-8, 88-9.

41 Ibid., pp. 23-31.

those whose wealth is not derived from the land: 'the four

classes of the mercantile, the manufacturing, the distributive,

and the professional.'(40) Both tendencies, he insisted, are

necessary for the well-being of any state, and a suitable

equilibrium between them must be maintained. A good balance, he

implied, had been reached in Britain, where favourable

geographical and historical circumstances had facilitated a

beneficial 'evolution' of the 'idea' of the state.(41)

Later on in this work, conflicting tendencies in the nation

as a whole were similarly depicted in terms of a dynamic tension

between opposing 'forces' or 'powers'. Coleridge's explanation

of these 'forces' drew directly upon notions found in his Theory

of Life. While he claimed that his explanation was purely

analogous, he treated the polar 'forces' he described as really

operative in the nation. A healthy 'Body Politic', he

maintained, is contingent upon two conditions. The first is that

there be 'a due proportion of the free and permeative life and

energy of the Nation to the organized forces brought within

containing channels'. This 'free and permeative life and energy

of the Nation', he explained, could be compared to the 'vital

forces' of the organic world, which in turn are like the

'imponderable agents' responsible for the seemingly non-living

phenomena of magnetism and galvanism. He implied that there was

a natural balance between these immaterial 'vital forces' and the

liquid matter in an organism's vascular system ('the organized

forces brought within containing channels' referred to above).

Correspondingly, Coleridge argued, there ought to be a 'Balance'

in the nation (due to a 'polarization') between the 'vital


42 Ibid., pp. 85-6, 95.

43 Ibid., pp. 95-6. This was not unlike the positions of both Plato andBurke who similarly warned against monarchy and democracy in their

(continued...)

forces' of culture, knowledge and unfranchised wealth on the one

hand, and the 'containing channels' of the state's political and

legal institutions on the other. An imbalance between the two

kinds of force would have unfortunate consequences. For

instance, in the political and cultural environment of the

ancient Hellenic democracies, an overbalance of the permeative

forces had led to the disintegration of the body politic's

'organic structures'. In republican Venice, on the other hand, a

predominance of organization had resulted in a lifeless rigidity

in the institutions of the state - 'an ossification of the

arteries' - and the citizens had come to lose all their political

rights.(42)

The idea of polarity is also noticeable in Coleridge's

description of the second of his conditions for a country's

political well-being. This was again expressed as an opposition,

this time between the 'potential' and 'actual' 'powers' of a

nation. Such an opposition, Coleridge once more claimed, was

evident in Britain's history where the people's 'potential power'

to contest their government had long been present as a latent

counterweight to the 'actual power' delegated by the people to

those who ruled over them. He maintained that a sound balance

between these two 'powers' had been realized in the form of

Britain's constitutional monarchy. Whereas 'an Absolute

Monarchy' and 'a democratic Republic' are similar, he argued, in

that both these forms of government leave no place for

opposition: 'in both alike, the Nation, or People, delegates its

whole power. Nothing is left obscure, nothing suffered to remain

in the Idea [of the Constitution], unevolved and only

acknowledged as an existing, yet indeterminable Right.'(43)


43(...continued)extreme forms. See: Sabine, Political Theory, pp. 78-9; Burke,Reflections, p. 78.


45 Ibid., p. 33.

It is important to recognize that Coleridge's use of the idea

of 'balance' in his dynamic politics was to some degree

rhetorical. Certainly, in On the Constitution of the Church and

State, he argued for a sharing of power between the landed and

mercantile classes. But his opposition to reform strongly

suggests that he didn't believe the relationship should be equal.

'Balance' was an idea that would have won Coleridge approval, but

was probably not what he really meant. For his aim was to defend

the pre-eminence of the traditional, landed interest at a time

when its power was seriously being contested by the forces of a

new 'commercial G. Britain'.

Interestingly, Coleridge's polar conception of the body

politic had a precedent in the political thought of Burke. Some

forty years before Coleridge advanced his mature conception of

the state as a 'balance' between conflicting forces of

'permanence' and 'progression', Burke asserted in the Reflections

that there were two fundamental tendencies at work in the state

which he referred to as 'the two principles of conservation and

correction'.(44) He went on to explain the operation of these

principles in terms very much like those used by Coleridge.

Before the Revolution, Burke argued, France had an almost perfect

social constitution, containing(45)

that variety of parts ... all that combination, and allthat opposition of interests, ... that action andcounteraction, which, in the natural and in the politicalworld, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers,draws out the harmony of the universe.


46 Ibid., p. 31.

47 Ibid., p. 32.

The resemblance of this worldview to that of Coleridge is

striking. It not only anticipates the polar framework of

Coleridge's idealist politics, but confirms again that Burke too

saw nature as providing a basis for politics. England's

constitution, Burke boasted, followed 'the pattern of nature ...

Our political system is placed in a just correspondence and

symmetry with the order of the world, and with the mode of

existence decreed to a permanent body composed of transitory

parts'.(46) Any transformation in the state, this implies, should

imitate nature, where a fundamental unity is always maintained

and change is gradual:(47)

the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, oryoung, but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy ...Thus, by preserving the method of nature in the conductof the state, in what we improve, we are never whollynew; in what we retain, we are never wholly obsolete.

In Burke, then, Coleridge had a possible model for his

dynamic politics. It is by no means clear, though, that his

political application of polarity came from Burke, for he does

not explicitly mention Burke in this connection. He does however

show tremendous enthusiasm throughout his mature writings for

German idealism, which makes the latter a more plausible source

for his polar politics. In the end, this is not the vital issue,

for what really matters is that Coleridge, Burke and others used

dynamism to support their conservative political agenda.


48 The following summary is based on Kant, Critique of Judgement, Pt. 2,pp. 3-5, 18-24, 28.

V.6 The Organic State

The importance of a philosophy that accounts for unity in

nature and the social significance of this, is apparent also in

the idea of the organism, an idea prominent in the dynamic

philosophy and confirmed by its idealist epistemology. The

idealist basis of this notion is expressed particularly clearly

by Kant. In the second part of the 1790 Critique of Judgement,

Kant discussed the idea of the organism at some length. The

broad aim of this part of his Critique, entitled 'Critique of

Teleological Judgement', was to investigate the principle of

teleology in nature.(48) There Kant argued that, on the basis of

an analogy with our own minds, finality or purpose is a quality

we attribute to nature, so as to make sense of living phenomena

that cannot be explained in terms of mechanistic cause and effect

relations. This does not mean that nature really is governed by

purpose or a kind of consciousness, but simply that we ascribe

such a purpose to aspects of it. Kant insisted that to thus view

things in nature as if they were directed by a conscious purpose

is a 'regulative' principle of our thinking: it enables us to

conceptualize our experience by applying a framework of rules to

the phenomena in question; it is not 'constitutive', for it does

not disclose to us the real constitution of nature. The 'final

causes' we read into nature, he indicated, are 'ideal causes',

while the 'efficient causes' investigated by mechanistic science

may be considered 'real'.

For Kant, those things in nature to which we assign purpose

are organisms. The special characteristic of an organism is that

it is 'both cause and effect of itself', for each part of it

seems to have the development of the whole as its goal, while at

the same time being the product of a 'formative' principle found


49 Ibid., p. 23.

50 PL, pp. 195-6. Cf. above, p. 128.

within the whole. He proposed the following definition: 'an

organized natural product is one in which every part is

reciprocally both end and means.' He also argued that this idea

of organization in nature could be used as a fitting analogy for

a 'state' or 'body politic',(49)

for in a whole of this kind certainly no member should bea mere means, but should also be an end, and, seeing thathe contributes to the possibility of the entire body,should have his position and function in turn defined bythe idea of the whole.

These ideas - that an organism is characterized by an

interdependence of parts and that the purposes of the whole

direct and unify the actions of its parts - are prominent in the

mature Coleridge's philosophy. Coleridge, however, went further

than Kant by viewing the idea of the organism as not merely a

projection of our minds onto nature, but as a real feature of the

world. In a passage from the Philosophical Lectures, Coleridge

spelt out what he saw as the defining characteristic of an

organism - the notion that a whole is greater than, and so in a

sense, prior to, its parts. There, he claimed that the entire

universe in fact ought to be viewed as an 'organic' entity,

expressing a greater, unifying purpose through all its individual

parts.(50)

Is not the whole power of the universe concerned in everyatom that falls and takes its place as a living particlethere? ... Depend on it, whatever is grand, whatever istruly organic and living, the whole is prior to theparts.

Here Coleridge went on to indicate that states were similarly

organic, having a unity and purpose to which the individuals who


51 Ibid., p. 196. The angle bracketing here indicates Kathleen Coburn'seditorial completion of missing text, based on Coleridge's lecturenotes, marginalia, and publications. See ibid., p. 20.

52 Ibid., p. 195. This passage has been cited more fully in ChapterIII, p. 191 above.

53 CC,10, p. 107.

make them up are subservient. 'That man is unworthy of being a

citizen of a state', he declared,(51)

who does not know the citizens are for the sake of thestate, not the state for the sake of the immediate fluxof persons who form at that time the people. Who doesnot know what a poor worthless creature man would be ifit were not for the unity of human nature being preservedfrom age to age through the godlike form of the state?Who does not carry it further on, and judge of all thingsin proportion as they partake of unity? Who <does not>judge of the democratic elements as far <as the claims ofeach> by the individual <are as much as possiblecompatible with the claims of all as individuals, andwith those of the commonweal as a whole>?

Coleridge insisted that this organic view of the state was

antithetical to the liberal, atomistic one sanctioned by the

mechanical philosophy. The latter, he complained, sustained the

natural rights ideology of the French revolutionaries. 'We have

only to put one word for the other, and in the mechanical

philosophy to give the whole system of the French Revolution.'(52)

Coleridge's conviction that states ought to be viewed as

'organic', having a 'moral' unity and purpose that transcend the

particular interests and purposes of their constituent parts, is

also made clear in On the Constitution of the Church and State.

There, for instance, he maintained that the 'right idea of a

STATE, or Body Politic' is that in which 'the integral parts,

classes, or orders are so balanced, or interdependent, as to

constitute, more or less, a moral unit, an organic whole'.(53)

One of the important implications of this view (found also in

Kant's recommendation above of an organic conception of the body


54 The following is based on Plato, Republic, 427-449.

politic) is that the individual needs of a state's citizens must

coincide with the greater needs of the state as a whole. This

was of course central to Burke's conservative politics, and we

shall later see that Burke in fact explicitly used organic

imagery to defend his position against the individualism of late

eighteenth-century natural rights doctrines.

The idea expressed in these passages - that a state has an

overarching purpose with which the aims of its citizens must be

brought into harmony - has a long history in political thought.

It is found, for example, in the ancient Greek tradition that

Coleridge often invoked, especially in Plato. In Plato,

moreover, the idea that the state has a unity and purpose that

lies beyond the temporal manifestation of individual desires and

motivations is explicitly conveyed via the analogy of the human

organism.

Thus, in the Republic, Plato compared the functions of the

different classes of citizens in his ideal state to a hierarchy

of psychological faculties.(54) He argued that the highest class

of citizens, consisting of the philosopher ruler(s), is like

wisdom or reason. The second class of soldiers or 'auxiliaries',

whose role is to ensure that the rulers' wishes are executed, are

compared to courage or the will. The final and lowest class is

that of the workers, whose corresponding faculty is the appetite

or desire. Just as harmony in the individual is produced by the

reason and the will keeping desire in check, harmony in the

state, Plato maintained, is achieved through obedience of the

inferior classes to the philosopher ruler(s). He went on to

discuss the parallel between justice in the state and justice in

the individual - a parallel presumed throughout the Republic.

Justice in the individual, he claimed, is produced when each


55 Cf. Hutchison, 'Why does Plato urge rulers to study astronomy',pp. 41-3.

56 Plato, Timaeus, 69-70.

57 Ibid., 70. Cf. Hutchison, 'Political Iconology', pp. 102-4.

faculty performs the role it is designed for. Reason of course

is naturally meant to rule and the other faculties to obey.

Justice, Plato suggested, could be compared to good health and

injustice to disease. Now, as injustice or disease in the

individual occurs when the appetite tries to overrule reason and

the will, injustice in the state arises, he argued, when the

members of a particular class usurp the functions of another

class to which their nature or education has not suited them.

Justice in the state, he concluded, results when the members of a

class carry out no other function than that appropriate to their

class. What is important here is that the state is seen as

having an overriding purpose to which all its citizens must be

subservient.(55)

In the Timaeus, Plato added a physiological counterpart to

this psychological hierarchy. He portrayed reason as located in

the head, courage in the chest, and appetite in the abdomen.(56)

While he did not overtly apply this bodily analogy to society,

there are clear echoes here of the political message of the

Republic: that the masses should obey their rulers. Plato

argued, for example, that the gods had located courage in the

region of the chest so that(57)

it would be well-placed to listen to the commands of reasonand combine with it in forcibly restraining the appetiteswhen they refused to obey the word of command from thecitadel. They stationed the heart, which links the veins andis the source of the blood which circulates through thebody's members, in the guardroom, in order that when passionwas roused to boiling point by news of wrong being done,whether by external action or internally by the appetites,commands and threats should circulate quickly through thebody's narrow ways, and any sentient part of it listenobediently and submit to the control of the best.


58 Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Act 1, Scene 1, ll. 128-38, 140-4.

59 Ibid., ll. 146-52.

Such an organic view of the state appears over and over again

in history. One notable example is provided by Shakespeare's

Coriolanus, where the image is persistent. There in one famous

passage the doctrine is used by Menenius Agrippa (Coriolanus's

friend) to explain to a Roman citizen why the latter's hostility

to the senate is misguided. Menenius tells a story about a

revolt by the members of the body against the belly. They are

disgruntled by the fact that they have less nourishment than the

belly, which, however, appears to do nothing. To the complaints

of the body's members the belly replies that, although it has

initial access to the food introduced into the body, this is only

because its role is to nourish the whole body.(58)

True is it, my incorporate friends ...That I receive the general food at firstWhich you do live upon; and fit it is,Because I am the storehouse and the shopOf the whole body. But, if you do remember,I send it through the rivers of your blood,Even to the court, the heart, to th' seat o' th' brain';And, through the cranks and offices of man,The strongest nerves and small inferior veinsFrom me receive that natural competencyWhereby they live.

... Though all at once cannotSee what I do deliver out to each,Yet I can make my audit up, that allFrom me do back receive the flour of all,And leave me but the bran.

The discontented citizen is a little puzzled by the moral of

Menenius's story. So Menenius explains that the belly represents

the senate and the unhappy members are the ungrateful citizens

who are ignorant of the belly's benevolence.(59) Once again, the

organic metaphor is used to convey the message that, just like a

living body, a state is made up of interdependent parts all of

which make a contribution to the well-being of the whole and all


60 Burke, Reflections, pp. 153-4. It is quite remarkable that Burkeanticipated Coleridge by using examples taken from chemistry and thephysics of electricity and magnetism to sustain his conservativepolitics.

of which have a special function or duty to carry out. So, the

masses ought to be obedient and suppress their interests for the

greater good of the whole. There is no need to pass political

power further down the scale.

An organic model of the body politic is also conspicuous in

politically conservative literature of the late eighteenth and

early nineteenth centuries, and is especially obvious in Burke.

Moreover, we saw above (p. 276) that Burke seemed to endorse a

dynamic view of nature. This impression is confirmed by another

passage from the Reflections, in which Burke suggested that in

human societies there were inherent, spiritual tendencies or

'powers', analogous to the active properties in matter. Such

'powers', he indicated, were selfless and directed toward the

common good. They accordingly served to unite humanity, just as

the active properties in nature unified matter. So to suppress

these 'powers' would be like trying to tear apart the fabric of

nature and would have similarly disastrous consequences. Thus in

the medieval monasteries, Burke maintained,(60)

was found a great power for the mechanism of politicbenevolence. There were revenues with a publicdirection; there were men wholly set apart and dedicatedto public purposes ... men denied to self-interests ...To destroy any power, growing wild from the rankproductive force of the human mind, is almost tantamount,in the moral world, to the destruction of the apparentlyactive properties of bodies in the material. It would belike the attempt to destroy (if it were in our competenceto destroy) the expansive force of fixed air in nitre, orthe power of steam, or of electricity, or of magnetism.These energies always existed in nature, and they werealways discernible.

The central idea expressed here, that social unity can only

be preserved if self-interest is relinquished, is also found in


61 Ibid., pp. 11-24.

62 Ibid., p. 19.

Burke's repeated use of the organic analogy. As mentioned above

(p. 280), an organic model appealed to Burke because it suggested

that the individuals who make up a state ought all to be working

toward the same common goal, and that the well-being of the whole

should override the particular interests of the individual (and

especially lower) parts. It was therefore misguided to challenge

the state - as the French revolutionaries had done - on the basis

of individual rights.

Another reason for the appeal of this model to Burke was that

an organism grows and changes, implying continuity. When applied

to politics, this idea suggested that revolution was wrong. An

organic model of the state strongly implied that one should

resist abrupt change, and retain traditions and institutions that

have developed gradually, in the 'natural' course of history. An

example of Burke's use of such an idea is found toward the

beginning of the Reflections, in a section attacking Richard

Price's interpretation of the English constitution, especially

the claim that the accession of William to the throne after the

1688 Revolution meant that the British monarchy is subject to

popular choice.(61) In his argument against the radical

Dissenter, Burke insisted on the principle of hereditary

succession, while conceding the need for occasional adjustments

to the state's constitution. He argued, however, that such

adjustments should not be too radical: they should be 'confined

to the peccant part only ... without a decomposition of the whole

civil and political mass, for the purpose of originating a new

civil order out of the first elements of society.'(62) This

latter path, Burke complained, was that taken by the French,

whose revolution Price had wholeheartedly supported, whereas the


63 Ibid., p. 20.

64 Burke's organic analogy is elucidated in Kant's discussion of thecharacteristics of an organism. 'A part of a tree ... generatesitself in such a way that the preservation of one part isreciprocally dependent on the preservation of the other parts. ...the leaves are certainly products of the tree, but they also maintainit in turn; for repeated defoliation would kill it, and its growth isdependent upon the action of the leaves on the trunk. ... naturecomes, in these forms of life, to her own aid in the case of injury,where the want of one part necessary for the maintenance of theneighbouring parts is made good by the rest ...'. Kant, Critique ofJudgement, Pt. 2, p. 19.

English at the time of the Restoration and the Glorious

Revolution,(63)

did not ... dissolve the whole fabric [of the nation].On the contrary, ... they regenerated the deficient partof the old constitution through the parts which were notimpaired. They kept these old parts exactly as theywere, that the part recovered might be suited to them.They acted by the ancient organized states in the shapeof their old organization, and not by the organicmoleculae of a disbanded people.

The image of the state offered here by Burke is that of a sick

body. If a part of this body is defective, it can only be

treated by leaving the healthy parts of the body intact. It

would be ridiculous (such reasoning goes) to treat a person with

a sore toe by amputating a leg.(64)

It is revealing that in the passage above Burke suggested

that the revolutionary alternative to this 'natural'

revitalization of the body politic was like a disorganized state

of 'organic moleculae'. For this was a term that had been made

current by Buffon, and we have already seen (p. 94) that Burke

disapproved of Buffon's science and the politics it supported.

Buffon had used the term 'organic molecules' to refer to the

elementary, active constituents of organisms, and Roger has

indicated that Buffon's idea was widely debated in the latter

part of the eighteenth century and criticized for its

materialistic overtones. For, while Buffon was not an atheist,


65 Roger, Buffon, pp. 128-9, 135-8, 340-4, 346-7. The mature Coleridgesimilarly disapproved of Priestley's seemingly materialistic forayinto dynamism. I have discussed this tension between spiritual andmaterial dynamicism in Sysak, 'Coleridge's Construction', pp. 74-5.


67 Ibid., p. 94.

his idea was interpreted as a purely materialistic dynamicism,

implying that activity in nature was nothing but a quality of

matter and not given by God.(65) By linking Buffon's idea with

revolutionary anarchy, Burke seemed to be suggesting that social

cohesion is undermined by metaphysical schemes that reject

spirit.

Later on in the Reflections, Burke compared a state's

constitution to the body of a father which, when injured, ought

to be handled with 'pious awe and trembling solicitude.' But the

French revolutionaries, Burke complained, were like 'children ...

who are prompt ... to hack that aged parent in pieces, and put

him into the kettle of magicians, in hopes that ... they may

regenerate the paternal constitution, and renovate their father's

life.'(66) Following this passage, Burke again attacked what he

saw as a revolutionary tendency 'to dissolve [any community] into

an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of elementary

principles.'(67) This was a clear attack on Epicureanism. So

Burke was inferring a link between the Epicurean matter theory

that underpinned the mechanical philosophy and the Epicurean

ethics of self-interest evident in individualistic natural rights

theories. A state that bases itself on a mechanistic, Epicurean

view of the world (he was suggesting) cannot have real unity;

this can only be provided by an organic view of the state.

It is worth comparing Burke's organic picture of the body

politic with that of the 'Epicurean' Hobbes. At the beginning of

Leviathan, Hobbes likened states to 'Automata' or 'Artificiall',


68 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 81.


mechanical bodies.(68) The obvious major difference here is that,

for Burke, the state is real, not artificial. Hobbes's man-made

body politic suggests that it can be taken apart and

reconstructed at will, which is opposed to Burke's idea of the

state as a living entity that will suffer irreparable damage if

subjected to radical change.

Burke's description above of the French mutilation of their

body politic was followed by the well-known passage, cited in

Chapter II (p. 108), on the 'great primæval contract of eternal

society' which joins past, present and future generations in an

indissoluble bond. He contrasted the organic continuity and

interconnection provided by such a 'contract' with the transience

and superficiality of other 'subordinate contracts' made on a

purely commercial or expedient basis. States, he argued, 'ought

not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership

agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee ... or some other such

low concern, ... to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties.'(69)

A society based on short-term, selfish considerations, then,

offered neither the connection nor the sense of spiritual

continuity that were distinctive of the organic social model

upheld by Burke. Such a mercenary society, however, seemed to

him to have been ushered in by the French Revolution, and he

repeatedly deplored the loss of a past era in which (he alleged)

spiritual leadership and a sense of common purpose were

widespread.

In late eighteenth-century Germany, an organic conception of

society, overtly opposed to views of the French Enlightenment,

was also promoted. Thinkers like Herder and Hamann, for example,

challenged uniformitarian social and scientific philosophies.


70 Cristaudo, Metaphysics of Science and Freedom, pp. 129-30. See alsoSchenk, European Romantics, pp. 15-16.

71 Schelling, University Studies, p. 25.

72 Ibid., pp. 112, 145.

73 Ibid., p. 113. On Fichte's view of the state as the guarantor ofcitizens' rights, see Aris, Political Thought in Germany,pp. 118-123.

They insisted that every culture was unique by virtue of its own

language, history and religion, and that these diverse aspects of

a culture could not be artificially separated from it, for they

together formed an 'organic' whole.(70)

Illustrating such a tendency, early in the next century,

Schelling put forward an explictly organic view of the state, in

his Lectures on the Method of University Studies. Echoing Kant's

conception of the organism, he argued that 'a state is perfect if

every citizen, while a means in relation to the whole, is also an

end in himself.'(71) For Schelling (as we saw above, p. 268), the

perfect state had to be derived from 'the realm of the Ideas',

and he asserted that this task had only previously be undertaken

by Plato in the Republic, where the state 'is entirely ideal -

spiritualized, so to speak'.(72) Indeed, Schelling's state, like

Plato's, was opposed to individualism, and he attacked the latter

in one of its main modern incarnations as the doctrine of natural

rights. In particular he complained that Fichte, in the latter's

Foundations of Natural Right According to the Principles of the

Wissenschaftslehre (1796-7), had wrongly advanced a view that the

main purpose of government is to protect the rights of its

citizens. Such an idea, Schelling claimed, represented the state

as something artificial and mechanical, and denied the unifying,

organic character of states. For a system 'which aims only at

safeguarding rights', Schelling contended,(73)

is ... separated from all positive institutions intendedto further the vigor, the regular rhythm, and the beauty


74 Müller, Elements of Politics (Public lectures of 1808-9), cited inReiss, ed., German Romantics, p. 150.

75 Reiss, ed., German Romantics, pp. 155, 150-1.

of public life ... But emphasis on the finite aspectstransforms the organic unity of the state into an endlessmechanism in which nothing unconditioned can be found.

Around the same time, other German intellectuals such as Adam

Müller (1779-1829) eagerly embraced the teachings of Burke and,

like him, employed dynamic terminology to argue for unity in the

state. 'The state', Müller maintained in lectures of 1808-9, 'is

the intimate association ... of the total internal and external

life of a nation into a great, energetic, infinitely active and

living whole.'(74) Just like his contemporary, Coleridge, Müller

contrasted this dynamic view of the state with that promoted by

the French revolutionaries, the philosophes, the physiocrats and

Adam Smith. He accused all the latter of viewing the state

abstractly and of improperly adopting a too rational, scientific

approach in politics. He complained that 'physiocrats,

encyclopaedists, the whole sect of philosophers has been the real

cause of the illusion that science can use the state for its

experiments'. He also criticized one Ritter von Schlözer for

proposing a distinctly mechanistic view of the state. According to

Müller, Schlözer had written that 'the most instructive manner of

discussing the theory of the state is to treat the state like an

artificial machine ...'.(75)

Hegel similarly advanced a view of the state from a specifically

idealist standpoint, which emphasized the individual's relationship

to the community. Hegel too suggested a connection between the

mechanical philosophy and individualistic natural rights doctrines.

Like Burke, Coleridge and many others, he condemned liberal theories

of rights which he saw as embodied in French Jacobinism. He

complained that such theories portrayed the state as something

atomistic and mechanical, rather than as a living, organic


76 Sabine, Political Theory, pp. 648-55, 660-1; Cristaudo, Metaphysicsof Science and Freedom, pp. 174-7.

77 G. W. F. Hegel, Natural Law: The Scientific Ways of Treating NaturalLaw, Its Place in Moral Philosophy, and Its Relation to the PositiveSciences of Law, (trans. T. M. Knox; Philadelpia: University ofPhiladelphia Press, 1975), pp. 65-6, cited in Cristaudo, Metaphysicsof Science and Freedom, p. 174.

78 M. Hess, Philosophische und sozialistische Aufsätze, 1837-1850, (ed.Cornu und Mönke; Berlin, 1961), p. 339. Hess also criticized theideology of liberal capitalism which he and many others saw asstemming from individualistic natural rights theories. He complainedabout those 'complete and conscious egoists who sanction in freecompetition the war of all against all and in the so-called Rights ofMan the rights of isolated individuals ...'. Ibid., p. 345. Citedin McLellan, Young Hegelians, pp. 155, 156.

79 Ibid., pp. 155-6. For one of the earliest examples in Germany ofthis exaltation of the medieval, see Novalis, Christianity or Europe.See also Aris, Political Thought in Germany, pp. 308-18. For anexcellent discussion of medievalism in nineteenth-century Britain,see Chandler, Dream of Order.

entity.(76) The state in such theories, he protested, was 'not an

organization but a machine. The "people" is not here the organic

body of a common and rich life, but an atomistic, life-impoverished

multitude.'(77) Later, in terms very similar to Coleridge's critique

of liberal philosophies, Hegel's followers condemned the Rights of

Man doctrine as encouraging a kind of social atomism. For instance,

Moses Hess - one of the Young Hegelians - observed that, in this

philosophy,(78)

practical egoism was sanctioned in that men were declared tobe single individuals, and true men to be abstract, nakedpersons; The Rights of Man were proclaimed as the rights ofindependent men, and so as the independence of men from eachother.

Like Burke and many nineteenth-century British thinkers, the

Young Hegelians, including Marx, counterposed the individualism

of contemporary liberal philosophies to what they argued were the

more salutary, interdependent relations of medieval, European

society.(79) Coleridge's criticism of natural rights thus

anticipated, along with Burke and Hegel, the Marxian analysis of

the alienation of the citizen in the new industrial bourgeois

society. Indeed, in terms remarkably like those we observed in


80 Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, pp. 37-8, cited in Chandler,Dream of Order, p. 4.

Coleridge's 1805 condemnation of a 'commercial G. Britain', Marx

and Engels in the Communist Manifesto (1848) complained that(80)

the bourgeoisie ... has put an end to all feudal,patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly tornasunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his'natural superiors', and has left remaining no othernexus between man and man than naked self-interest ... Ithas resolved personal worth into exchange value, and inplace of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms,has set up that single unconscionable freedom - freetrade.

What is clear from all of this is that many thinkers in the

decades following the French revolution saw politics and ethics

as linked to a reading of nature. If nature was misrepresented -

an offence Coleridge and Burke imputed to those who explained

nature in mechanistic or materialistic terms - there would be

disastrous social consequences. For Burke, Coleridge, Schelling,

Hegel and others, the right reading of nature was one that

emphasized unity, and such a reading was provided by a dynamic

philosophy.

p.306

CONCLUSION

We have now completed the tasks promised in the introduction.

Close examination of the primary literature has shown us that

Coleridge's thinking about science always had an important socio-

political dimension. Moreover, we have seen that the belief that

natural philosophy significantly affected politics, and that the

former was in fact being used to justify the latter, was widely

shared at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the

nineteenth centuries. In particular, we noted that many claimed

that the mechanical philosophy was linked to the new liberal

capitalist ideology of the period. What is of particular value

in Coleridge's criticism is that he clearly spells out for us the

various ways in which he saw this philosophy as sustaining

liberal politics.

His articulation of the social uses of mechanism informs us

that a key concern, expressed also by others at the time,

involved the growing epistemic authority of science. This

concern is further evidence for the well-known but ambiguous

friction between science and religion in early modern Europe.

But, for Coleridge, there was also a significant moral dimension

to this ascendancy of science. For the sensationalist

epistemology of the prevailing mechanistic philosophy, he argued,

was being used to legitimize a commercial ideology - the

Epicurean view that human beings are motivated primarily by self-

interest. While subverting the Christian belief in a higher,

disinterested morality, this Epicurean ethics was especially

abhorrent to Coleridge because it also implied that there was no

real principle of social unity. It was no accident, he insisted,

that the individualistic, liberal, social model reflected the

atomistic ontology of the mechanical philosophy.

Conclusion p.307

Coleridge, like others, saw the special virtue of the dynamic

philosophy as highlighting the importance of an immaterial or

spiritual realm in nature. This had obvious religious

significance. But we observed that this philosophy also provided

a natural basis for a conservative politics that emphasized a

hierarchical social order and the obedience of the masses, in

opposition to Enlightenment individualism. This social use of

science reveals two things in particular. Firstly, it

demonstrates a widespread belief in the social authority of

science. Secondly, it sheds light on the very important

transition in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century

science from mechanical to dynamic modes of explanation. My

examination of Coleridge and others shows that there were also

major social reasons for favouring a dynamic philosophy.

p.308

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Title:The natural philosophy of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Date:2000

Citation:Sysak, J. A. (2000). The natural philosophy of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. PhD thesis,Department of History and Philosophy of Science, The University of Melbourne.

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THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHY OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

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