Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection in the Formation of a Manly Character, on the Several Grounds of Prudence, Morality, and Religion

London, G. Bell and Sons, Ltd, 1913, 381 pgs.

Summary: Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), the author of the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, recovered from his opium addiction and recorded his insights of traveling from a pantheistic Unitarian as a young man to an evangelical Anglican at the end of his life.

Coleridge’s Aids to Reflection was designed to assist young philosophically orientated pastors and lay leaders in the church of England to overcome modernity and believe and teach “the faith once handed down to the saints.” He organized the book as an unfolding series of aphorisms which introduce the necessary philosophical concepts, reinforces them, and then introduces the theological distinctions necessary for the faith and salvation.

He has four basic insights: ethics from a Christian perspective are found in an ascending chain of prudence, morality, and spiritual religion; understanding and reason are different; the human will is supernatural and therefore outside of natural chains of causation; there is an absolute difference between the material and the spiritual. The latter is the most primary insight.

There are side steps into complex meditations and explanations on understanding figurative language in the Bible, the relationship between understanding and animals, quirky and possibly accurate understanding of the New Testament Greek and how concursus functions, a roughshod critique of Hegel’s dialectic in the footnotes (I think), and at least one joke or insult for or at his reader buried in a four page long footnote (148-152).

Benefits/Detriments: It’s brilliant, witty, memorable, and as far as I can tell almost completely sound in broad outline—though please read Shedd’s warnings in Literary Essays. At the same time self-indulgent and aphoristic.

Part of the hindrance to reading Aids to Reflection is its design to unfold into theological and philosophical illumination for a particular kind of reader. There is a system, but it is based on Coleridge’s heuristic device of aphorisms. Below is my attempt to organize Coleridge into a system independent of the aphorisms. I’ve done so tempt you to become Coleridge’s reader and to justify Shedd’s and my own high praise.

W. G. T. Shedd (1820-1894) describes Coleridge as, “the first Englishman at the beginning of the century, to combat the materialism of Hartley, Priestly, and the French Encylopaedist; and at the close of the century, the distinctions which he laid down, and the positions which he maintained, are still the best answer to the revived materialism of their successors,” Literary Essays (reprint, 1999; Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1878), ix.

Aids to Reflection was first published in 1825 in England and in America in 1829 by Dr. James Marsh (1794-1842). Marsh also wrote the important “Preliminary Essay to ‘Aids to Reflection,’” introducing Samuel Coleridge’s theology to an American audience.  Dr. Marsh (1794-1842) was highly regarded by Shedd and his mentor at Vermont College. Further, Marsh reintroduced the theological posture of faith seeking understanding in the United States. In the “Preliminary Essay,” Dr. Marsh considers the basic tenants of Coleridge’s philosophical theology in a review that Shedd referred to as “thoroughly elaborated, and truly profound estimate of the philosophical opinions of Coleridge” (Literary Essays, 272).

As I concur with Marsh’s review of Coleridge’s philosophical theology, I will only note that Marsh’s purpose in publicizing the work was twofold: his first concern was over forms of fideism that required Christians to believe what they understand as irrational. Coleridge has offered a system which maintains “CHRISTIAN FAITH IS THE PERFECTION OF HUMAN REASON [sic]” (xxxi). The task of the theologian is not to allow reason (or more correctly his reasons) to teach us doctrine, but rather to show that revealed doctrine does not contradict reason.

The second propose was to deal with the interpretive presuppositions of modernity held by secularist and a school of Christian thought about the human mind. This is necessary because the mind is metaphysical, and what the reader believes about the mind then becomes his metaphysical or philosophical system, thus controlling the outcomes of his interpretation:

Those who study the Work without prejudice, and adopt its principles to any considerable extent, will understand too how deeply an age may be ensnared in the metaphysical webs of its own weaving, or entangled in the net which the speculations of a former generation have thrown over it, and yet suppose itself blessed with perfect immunity from the dreaded evils of metaphysics” (xli).

[W]riters now-a-days on such subjects will assure us, that he has nothing to do with metaphysics, but is guided only by common sense and the laws of interpretation (xl).

Marsh is here responding to the:

“doctrines of Locke and the Scotch metaphysicians respecting power, cause and effect, motives and freedom of the will, [creating] . . .no essential distinction between that which is natural, and that which is spiritual, [and] we cannot find rational grounds for the feeling of moral obligation, and the distinction between regret and remorse” (xlix).

In Marsh and Shedd’s understanding Locke and Scottish Common Sense Realism was a reductive response to Hume’s (1711-1776) skepticism. This system was grasped by many Christians to inoculate the church against the rising philosophical materialism and mysticism—in modern parlance secularism, theological liberalism, and incoherent fideism. But by rejecting or modifying traditional scholastic psychology towards materialism, Scotch metaphysicians inadvertently created a system that undermined cardinal doctrines within Christianity and opened the door to pantheism and materialism.

Dr. Marsh believed that the framework presented by Coleridge had the potential of responding to modernity without the liabilities of Locke and his cohorts.

I’ve arranged the rest of this review around Coleridge’s four basic insights: there is an absolute difference between the material and the spiritual; the human will is supernatural and therefore outside of natural chains of causation; understanding and reason are different; and ethics from a Christian perspective are found in an ascending chain of prudence, morality, and spiritual religion.

The Absolute Difference between the Spiritual and the Material

“Whatever is representable in the forms of Time and Space, is Nature. But whatever is comprehended in Time and Space is included in the Mechanism of Cause and Effect. And conversely, whatever, by whatever means, has its principle in itself, so far as to originate its actions, cannot be contemplated in any of the forms of Space and Time; it must, therefore, be considered as Spirit or Spiritual. . .” (44).

“Nature is a line in constant and continuous evolution. Its beginning is lost in the super-natural: and for our understanding, therefore, it must appear as a continuous line without beginning or end. But where there is no discontinuity there can be no origination, and every appearance of origination in nature is but a shadow of our own casting. It is a reflection from our own Will or Spirit. Herein, indeed, the Will consists. This is the essential character by which the WILL is opposed to Nature, as Spirit, and raised above Nature, as self-determining Spirit—this namely, that it is a power of originating an act or state (ftn. 1, Spiritual Aphorism X, Comment, 176).

Self-Inclination of the Human Will

“Now the Spirit in Man (that is, the Will) knows its own state in and by its Acts alone: even as in geometrical reasoning the Mind knows its constructive faculty in the act of constructing, and contemplates the act in the product (that is, the mental figure or diagram) which is inseparable from the act and co-instantaneous” (55-56).

To have a responsible will, one must not only be conscience and make individual choices but also be self-conscious or able to reflect on self as self.

“In irrational agents, namely, the brute animals, the will is hidden or absorbed in the law. The law is their nature. In the original purity of a rational agent the uncorrupted will is identical to the law. Nay, inasmuch as a Will perfectly identical with the Law is one with the divine Will, we may say, that in the unfallen rational agent the Will constitutes the Law” (201).

What Satan achieved at the temptation was to have Adam and Eve contemplate God’s will as potentially different than their will. Once Adam imagined God’s law (announced will) as exterior to himself, he could then contemplate having a will at variance with God. And when he desired this state of affairs, he inclined his will in opposition to God, and God’s law and the ability to love the Lord with all of his being exited with the desire.

To have a free will, or to be responsible for the inclination of the will towards or against God, is a necessary condition of moral responsibility and is created or identified by self-consciousness and the necessary corollary of a conscience.

“That I am conscious of something within me peremptorily commanding me to do unto others as I would they should do unto me ;—in other words, a categorical (that is, primary and unconditional) imperative;—that the maxim (regula maxima, or supreme rule) of my actions, both inward and outward, should be such as I could, without any contradiction arising therefrom, will to be the law of all moral are rational beings;—this, I say, is a fact of which I am no less conscious (though in a different way), nor less assured, than I am of any appearance presented by my outward senses. Nor is this all; but in the very act of being conscious of this in my own nature, I know that it is a fact of which all men either are or ought to be conscious;—a fact, the ignorance of which constitutes either the non-personality of the ignorant, or the guilt, in which latter case the ignorance is equivalent to the knowledge wilfully darkened. I know that I possess this knowledge as a man, and not as Samuel Taylor Coleridge; hence, knowing that consciousness of this fact is the root of all other consciousness, and the only practical contradistinction of man from the brutes, we name it the conscience; by the natural absence or presumed presence of which, the law, both divine and human, determines whether X Y Z be a thing or a person. . . .the senses being morally passive, while the conscience is essentially connected with the will, though not always, nor, indeed, in any case, except after frequent attempts and aversions of will, dependent on the choice. Thence we call the presentations of the senses impressions, those of the conscience commands or dictates. . .but in the fact of the conscience we are not only agents, but it is by this alone that we know ourselves to be such. . . “An Essay on Faith,” in Aids to Reflection in the Formation of a Manly Character, on the Several Grounds of Prudence, Morality, and Religion (London, G. Bell and Sons, Ltd, 1913), 341-342.

At the same time that man with a spiritual will is free, the effects of original sin remain: “Original Sin, needs only be carried on into its next consequence, and it will be found to imply the sense which I have given—namely, that Sin is Evil having an Origin. But in as much as it is evil, in God it cannot originate: and yet some Spirit (that is, in some supernatural power) it must. For in Nature there is no origin. Sin therefore is spiritual Evil; but the spiritual in man is the Will. Now when we do not refer to any particular sins, but to the state and constitution of the Will, which is the ground, condition, and common Cause of all Sins; and when we would further express the truth, that this corrupt nature of the Will must in some sense or other be considered as its own act, that the corruption must have been self-originated;—in this case and for this purpose we may, with no less propriety than force, entitle the dire spiritual evil and source of all evil, that is absolutely such, Original Sin. I have said, ‘the corrupt nature of the Will.’ I might add, that the admission of a nature into a spiritual essence by its own act is a corruption” (180). Sin introduced a nature, a law or bent, into the human soul that did not belong there. And because we are all in Adam, we all participated (1 Cor. 15:22) in his sin, and we all happily maintain this nature within our wills.

The Difference between the Understanding and Reason

According to Coleridge, following Bishop Leighton (1611-1684), understanding is “the faculty of judging according to sense” (144). This capacity is shared with animals. The “Judgments [sic] of the Understanding are binding only in relation to the objects of our Senses” (ibid).

Our understanding cannot address the substance of things, but rather what appears before our senses; it is therefore discursive and requires us to use our imaginations to connect ideas together in probable but not necessary explanations. Reason on the other hand, “is the Power of Universal and necessary Convictions, the Source and Substance of Truths above Sense, and having their evidence in themselves. Its presence is always marked by necessity of the position affirmed: this necessity being conditional, when a truth of Reason is applied to Facts of Experience, or to the rules and maxims of the Understanding; but absolute, when the subject matter is itself the growth or offspring of the Reason. Hence arises a distinction in the Reason itself, derived from the different mode of applying it, and from the objects to which it is directed. . .” (143).

Coleridge provides the following chart (148):

UnderstandingReason1.) Understanding is discursive.1.) Reason is fixed.2.) The Understanding in all its judgments refers to some other Faculty as its ultimate Authority.2.) The Reason in all its decisions appeals to itself, as the ground and substance of their truth. (Hebrews vi. 13.)3.) Understanding is the Faculty of Reflection.3.) Reason of Contemplation. Reason indeed is much nearer to SENSE than to Understanding: for Reason (says our great HOOKER) is a direct aspect of Truth, an inward Beholding, having a similar relation to the Intelligible or Spiritual, as SENSE has to the Material or Phenomenal.

Essentially, reason is something that we share with God and understanding is something we share with the animals. To reason, in the primary meaning of grasping the essence of something as it is, is essentially to know. We know that 2+2+4, but we understand that the car is out of gas.

Our understanding is based on correct information from our senses or the tools enhancing our senses and then correctly coordinating this information together as a description of reality. So we can know that the gas tank is empty as we look into it, but we cannot know the tank remains empty as we walk to the gas station (perhaps a friendly neighbor fills it up). We must reflect to understand, the car needs gas to run, the car is grinding as I turn the ignition, the idiot light representing an empty tank is flashing—I now understand the tank is empty.

Understanding is dependent on senses. If any of my senses provide inaccurate information, my understanding is likely untrue. But we must notice, that understanding can be accurate by accident. So for instance, the broken analog clock is accurate twice a day, so if I have accidentally coordinated my understanding with the clock at the right moment, I understand the time correctly but for the wrong grounds. The senses and the understanding can be wrong and right with and without agreement of reality.

Reason, rightly done, on the other hand lacks the possibility of error. Reason has its evidence not in the senses but within itself. And God, particularly the Son, is the Logos or the Reason of God. In as much as we are reasonable, we are like God and in as much as rely on our own understanding we are like the beasts.

There is an interplay between the understanding and reason: “The Practical Reason alone is Reason in the full and substantive sense. It is reason in its own sphere of perfect freedom; as the source of IDEAS, which Ideas, in their conversion to the responsible Will, become Ultimate Ends. On the other hand, Theoretic Reason, as the ground of the Universal and Absolute in all logical conclusions is rather the Light of Reason in the Understanding, and known to be such by its contrast with the contingency and particularity which characterize all the proper and indigenous growths of the Understanding” (ftn. 2, Appendix A, 277).

The ultimate end of man is to love God with his whole being, because of who God is and who man is. Within this sphere of freedom, man uses either reason (things necessarily true in and of themselves) or his reasons (his finite and sometimes sinful understanding) to decide if he shall love God or not.

We must also note: “[T]he imperfect human understanding can be effectually exerted only in subordination to, and in a dependent alliance with, the means and aidances supplied by the All-perfect and Supreme Reason; but that under these conditions it is not only an admissible, but a necessary, instrument of bettering both ourselves and others” (94).

These distinctions within reason and the understand work themselves out in statements like this: “By a Science I here mean any chains of Truth that are absolutely certain, or necessarily true for the human mind from the laws and constitution of the mind itself. In neither case is our conviction derived or capable of receiving any addition, from outward experience, or empirical data—i.e. matters-of-fact given to us through the medium of the Senses. . . .a connected series of conclusions ground on empirical Data, in contra-distinction from science. . . [I] denominate a Scheme” (195).

Prudence, Morals, and Spiritual Religion

Coleridge makes a helpful distinction between prudence, morals, and spiritual religion. He sees prudence as the attempt to avoid suffering in the future by prohibiting something: “Prudence is an active Principle, and implies a sacrifice of Self, though only to the same Self projected, as it were, to a distance” (22).

Prudence doesn’t save, because it is the beginning of the journey towards God: “Though prudence in itself is neither virtue nor spiritual holiness, yet without prudence, or in opposition to it, neither virtue nor holiness can exist” (33).

Prudence can be distinguished into four types (18-19): the first is an evil prudence which limits behavior not because it is sinful or displeases God, but because such behavior will or may cause suffering in the future. There is neutral or commendable prudence which if rightly motivated is useful for Christians, but is not evil.

Commendable prudence can develop into wise prudence if the user finds these activities “value in their present necessity, and their worth as . . .instruments of finally superseding, its birthplace in the world. . .” (19).

“Lastly, there is a prudence that co-exists with morality, as morality co-exists with the spiritual life: a prudence that is the organ of both, as the understanding is to the reason and the will, or as the lungs are to the heart and brain. This is A HOLY PRUDENCE. . .” (19).

Morality goes beyond the desire to avoid suffering and is the attempt to please God in a positive way: It springs from human reason and the conscience, yet at the same time morality can be acted upon without the Spirit of God. It is “the outward service [cf. James 1:26, 27] of ancient religion, the rites, ceremonies and ceremonial vestments of the old law, had morality for their substance. They were the letter, of which morality was the spirit: the enigma, of which morality was the meaning. But morality itself is the service and ceremonial (cultus exterior, qphskeia) of the Christian religion. The scheme of grace and truth that became through Jesus Christ, the faith that looks down into the perfect law of liberty, has light for its garments: it very robe is righteousness” (12-14).

Religion is the internalization of “the prefect law of liberty” into the heart of man by the Spirit of God. It is possible to participate in both prudence and morality without the indwelling Spirit of God, but with the Spirit comes salvation and true religion.

And it is here, on the grounds of spiritual religion, that Coleridge extends and pleads the gospel.

Generally helpful theological/philosophical statements

Quote of Vico (Not found in this volume, but implied.)

[The criterion and rule of the true is to have made it. Accordingly, our clear and distinct idea of the mind cannot be the criterion of the mind itself, still less of the other truths. For while the mind perceives itself, it does not make itself.]

Augustine: “Sic accipiter, ut mereamini intelligere. Fides debet praecdere intellectum, ut sit intellectus fidei praemium” (xviii) [So receive this, that you deserve to understand it. For the faith ought to precede the understanding, so that understanding may be the reward of faith]

“For if words are not THINGS, they are LIVING POWERS, by which the things of most importance to mankind are actuated, combined, and humanized” (xix).

“Again: in the world we see every where evidences of a Unity, which the components parts are so far from explaining, they necessarily pre-suppose it as the cause and condition of their existing as those parts; or even of their existing at all. This antecedent Unity, or Cause and Principle of each Union, it has since the time of Bacon and Kepler been customary to call a law” (40).

“[T]here is something in the human mind which makes it know (as soon as it is sufficiently awakened to reflect on its own thoughts and notices), that in all finite Quantity there is an Infinite, in all measures of time an Eternal; that the latter are the basis, the substance, the true and abiding reality of the former; and that as we truly are, only as far as God is with us, so neither can we truly possess (that is, enjoy) our Being or any other real Good, but by living in the sense of his holy presence” (54).

“For it is not in our power to disdain our nature, as sentient beings; but it is in our power to disclaim our nature as moral beings” (89).

“There is nothing, the absolute of which is not a Mystery. The contrary were indeed a contradiction in terms: for how can that, which is to explain all things, be susceptible of an explanation? It would be to suppose the same thing first and second at the same time” (91).

“In Wonder all Philosophy began: in Wonder it ends: and Admiration fills up the interspace. But the first Wonder is the offspring of Ignorance: the last is the parent of Adoration. The first is the birth-throe of our knowledge: the last is it euthanasy and apotheosis” (156).