Contrive somehow or other
to attain to just ideas as to the capacities and limitations of the
human consciousness, considered especially in relation to its two
important and eternally distinct functions, the Reason and the
Understanding: and peace of mind shall in due time be added unto you.
That is in effect Coleridge's answer to the inquirer who consults him;
and if the distinction between the Reason and the Understanding were as
obvious as it is obscure to the average unmetaphysical mind, and of a
value as assured for the purpose to which Coleridge applies it as it is
uncertain, the answer would nevertheless send many a would-be disciple
sorrowful away. His natural impulse is to urge the oracle to tell him
whether there be not some one moral attitude which he can wisely and
worthily adopt towards the universe, whatever theory he may form of his
mental relations to it, or without forming any such theory at all. And
it was because Carlyle supplied, or was believed to supply an answer,
such as it was, to this universal question, that his train of
followers, voluntary and involuntary, permanent and temporary, has been
so large.
It appears to me, therefore, on as careful an examination of
the point as the data admit of, that Coleridge's position in these
latter days of his life has been somewhat mythically exalted by the
generation which succeeded him.
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