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Coleridge And The Idea Of Evolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

George R. Potter
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Extract

Coleridge, more than any other man in the England of his time, sensed what were the significant currents of thought then in the civilized world, although his recognition of many of these ideas seems instinctive rather than conscious. Coleridge was often a prophet who saw as in a glass darkly. But though darkly, he saw—or, at least, felt.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , June 1925 , pp. 379 - 397
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1925

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References

1 S. F. Gingerich, “From Necessity to Transcendentalism in Coleridge.” P.M.L.A., XXXV, 1ff.

2 Laura J. Wylie, Studies in the Evolution of English Criticism, p. 197. The passage referred to is in The Friend, Essay 6, Section 2.

3 See, for instance, his comment on “man's having progressed from an orang-outang state,” quoted in section II of this discussion.

4 For a good discussion of the influence of this trip on Coleridge's mind, see Professor Gingerich's article, referred to before.

5 March 16, 1801. (Coleridge's Letters, Vol. I, p. 348).

6 The note is included in Coleridge's Notes Theological, Political, and Miscellaneous; p. 119.

7 Other names for the idea are : “scale of being,” “vital chain,” “vital scale,” “échelle des êtres.”

8 See his note on the passage in Stillingfleet referring to Sir Walter Raleigh, which I shall discuss in another connection later in this article.

9 This is not in The Friend as it was originally published in 1809, so far as I can find, but is in the enlarged version of 1818, Section 2, Essay 6. My references to The Friend, unless otherwise stated, are to the version printed in the Complete Works of Coleridge, New York, 1884.

10 See the summary of Coleridge's system, later in this discussion.

11 Theory of Life, Bohn edition, p. 410. The Theory of Life evidently contains some alterations or additions by James Gillman. See Editor's Preface, and Dr. Seth Watson's Preface, in the Bohn edition. A Brandi (S. T. Coleridge and the English Romantic School, Chap. VIII) calls Gillman the author and Coleridge only the helper. The extent of Gillman's contributions seems impossible to ascertain. The main ideas, at least, are undoubtedly Coleridge's, for almost every one of them can be paralleled in Coleridge's other writings. So I use the essay as Coleridge's, without depending, however, upon statements from it unless they are corroborated by Coleridge's statements elsewhere.

12 See Essays on the Fine Arts, written 1814. (Bohn edition, Miscellanies and Theory of Life, p. 46.)

13 For a full account of this important idea and its history, see Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire's Vie, Travaux, et Doctrine Scientifique de étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Paris and Strasbourg, 1847. For a brief explanation of the idea and its history, see my article, “Did Thomas Lovell Beddoes believe in the Evolution of Species?” (Mod. Philol., XXI, No. 1, August 1923).

14 See The Friend, final version, Section 2, Essay 7 and Essay 9.

15 The Friend, final version, Section 2, Essay 6.

16 Vol. I, 1818-19, p. 89: “Art. IX. Du couvercle des Branchies dans les poissons; et des quatre os correspondans du conduit auditif dans les animaux à respiration aérienne. Extrait abrégé du premier mémoire d'un ouvrage imprimé mais qui n'est pas encore publié et qui est intitulé ‘Philosophie Anatomique’, ou l'organisation des animaux vertébrés ramenée á un type uniforme. Tome I. Dans lequel on traite des appareils osseux de l'organe respiratoire sous le rapport de l'identité de leurs matériaux. Par M. Geoffroi St. Hilaire, Membre de l'Institut de France, & c. & c. & c. (Communicated by the Author).” The passage quoted from Geoffroy is the first paragraph of the article. This volume of the Quarterly Journal is rare. The Surgeon-General's library, Washington, D. C., has a copy. Coleridge's marginal note is published in his Notes Theological, Political, and Miscellaneous, pp. 248-49.

17 In Table Talk, and in the conversation reported by J. A. Heraud in his Oration on the Death of Coleridge, published in 1834.

18 Theory of Life, Bohn edition, p. 430. See also : Table Talk for July 9, 1827 : “In the very lowest link in the vast and mysterious chain of Being, there is an effort, although scarcely apparent, at individualization; but it is almost lost in the mere nature. A little higher up, the individual is apparent and separate, but subordinate to anything in man. At length, the animal rises to be on a par with the lowest power of the human nature. There are some of our natural desires which only remain in our most perfect state on earth as means of the higher powers' acting.”

19 Theory of Life, Bohn edition, p. 389.

20 Theory of Life, pp. 389-90.

21 Table Talk for July 9, 1827.

22 Aids to Reflection: Comment on Aphorism 74. See for the same idea expressed in other words, On the Constitution of Church and State, the Dialogue between Demosius and Mystes.

23 Given as Coleridge's words in a Thursday morning colloquy about the year 1827, by John A. Heraud, in his Oration on the Death of Coleridge, published 1834.

24 Aids to Reflection: Comment on Aphorism 74.

25 Page 9b of note-book, as printed in the Archiv für das Stud. der neueren Sprachen, Vol. 97, pp. 333ff.

26 Page 29a of the note-book. This, by the way, somewhat weakens Professor Gingerich's point made on page 23 of his article referred to before. He quotes a letter to Poole, written in 1801, which contains strictures on Newton as a materialist, and cites it as one of the first unmistakable signs of Coleridge's change of heart after his trip to Germany. Coleridge said, as can be seen by his note-book, the same thing about Newton, before his trip to Germany. I suspect that Professor Gingerich has somewhat underestimated the elements of Coleridge's later beliefs which were showing themselves distinctly, even before his trip to Germany.

27 To Josiah Wade, Jan. 27, 1796. (Coleridge's Letters, Vol. I, pp. 152-53).

28 See for example: Note-book for 1795-98 (Archiv für das Stud. der neuercn Sprachen), p. 25. Allsop, Thomas: Letters etc. of Coleridge, Vol. 2, p. 115. Biographia Epistolaris, Vol. I,p. 218 (Letter of Nov. 12, 1800), Vol. II, pp. 15 (Letter of June, 1807), and 46-7 (Letter of Jan. 30, 1809). The Letters of S. T. Coleridge, Vol. I, p. 211 (Dec. 31, 1796), 215 (Feb. 6, 1797), 386 (July 29, 1802). Table Talk for May 1, 1830. Anima Poetae, pp. 3, 4, 78, 127-28, 236. Biographia Literaria, (Bohn edition) p. 8. The Friend (final version), Section II, Essay VI. Miscellanies and Theory of Life (Bohn edition), p. 16.

29 May 30, 1815. (Letters of S. T. Coleridge, Vol. II, p. 648).

30 Coleridge : Notes on Stilling fleet. Printed for private circulation, Glasgow, 1875. Originally published in The Athenaeum, for March 27, 1875.

31 On page 544 of the Origines Sacrae.

32 Foot-note by editor of the Notes on Stilling fleet: '“Raleigh believed the hyæna to be a hybrid between the wolf and the fox.”

33 Coleridge's Complete Works, V, 16.

34 I am not, needless to say, here outlining any chronological process of thought in Coleridge's mind; I am simply trying to treat the matter logically, as I see it. Coleridge's reasoning of this sort was possibly conscious, possibly. unconscious.

35 Published 1816. For a discussion of this distinction between reason and understanding, see, for example, Professor Gingerich's article, referred to before.

36 Aids to Reflection, Comment on Aphorism 74.

37 Henry Crabbe Robinson (Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Lamb, etc. Selections from the Remains of H. C. Robinson. Ed. Edith J. Morley, 1922. p. 62) wrote of Coleridge : “He afterwards made many remarks on the doctrine of the Trinity from which I could gather only that he was very desirous to be orthodox, to indulge in all the subtleties and refinements of metaphysics and yet conform with the popular religion.”

38 Aids to Reflection, Comment on Aphorism 74.

39 J. A. Heraud's account of one of Coleridge's conversations in 1827. See his Oration on the Death of Coleridge.

40 Published 1830. Heraud quotes his verses I am citing, as a foot-note to this passage from Coleridge's conversation, and says the idea in the poem is taken from this idea in Coleridge. See his Oration on the Death of Coleridge, p. 7.

41 Dotted line is Heraud's, not an indication of passages omitted.

42 Italics mine.

43 For the latter idea in Schelling, see Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur, Book 2, Zusatz to Chapt. 6. The idea has a distinct resemblance to part of Herbert Spencer's evolutionary philosophy. In spite of the numerous articles that have appeared on the subject of Coleridge's debt to the Germans, no one has yet made a comprehensive survey of the field. The partial studies thus far made concentrate mostly on Coleridge's critical rather than his philosophical ideas. A. C. Dunstan (“The German Influence on Coleridge” : Modem Language Review, XVII, 272-81; XVIII, 183-201) has a foot-note giving a list of publications on the subject (q. v.), and his own article contains some material on Coleridge's philosophy, though concerned chiefly with Coleridge's critical ideas. A. D. Snyder (The Critical Principle of the Reconciliation of Opposites as Employed by Coleridge, Ann Arbor, 1918) connects Coleridge's idea of a contracting and an expanding force in nature with Schelling. The earlier attacks and defenses of Coleridge by De Quincey, Hare, Gillman, and Ferrier are also interesting historically in this connection. For an account of the controversy see A. A. Helmholtz, The Indebtedness of S. T. Coleridge to A. W. von Schlegel, Madison, Wis., 1907.

44 See Biographia Literaria, Chap. IX.

45 Coleridge very probably read not only the article by Geoffroy in the Quarterly Journal (see earlier in this discussion), but also Geoffroy's Philosophie Anatomique. Compare, for instance, Philosophie Anatomique, Part I, Paris, 1818, pp. xxiiff, 97, 98, 412, with J. A. Heraud's account of a conversation with Coleridge, in Heraud's Oration on the Death of S. T. Coleridge.

46 See The Friend, final version, Sect. 2, Essay 7.

47 See Table Talk for June 29, 1833.