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in which the elements of thought are therein blended. Without departing at all from the path of truth in the narration of facts, the Imagination of the historian may be almost continually energizing, in blending into the forms of beauty, granceur, and sublimity, the elements of thought which the narrative presents. In contemplating history, as its glowing facts are set forth in such forms, the Imagination may receive its most rapid development. The remark of Coleridge, that but a small part of even the best poems that we meet with, presents the appropriate creations of the Imagination, is pre-eminently true of fictitious writings. The question, then, whether the perusal of a particular work of fiction tends to improve the Imagination, depends not upon the fact that it is fiction, but upon the manner in which the elements of thought are therein blended.

Imagination and Fancy-How improved.

Every power is developed in one way only-in being exercised upon its appropriate objects. Each of the functions of the Intelligence under consideration, has its appropriate sphere. To develop the power, we must find its legitimate sphere, and in that sphere exercise it upon its appropriate objects. The Fancy is improved, by developing in the mind the sense of the beautiful, the true, the perfect, and the sublime, by furnishing the Intelligence with distinct apprehensions of the forms of beauty, grandeur, and sublimity which the universe of matter and mind, nature and art presents.

The Imagination will be improved by familiarizing the mind with the true functions of the power itself, with the laws which regulate its action, in blending into form the elements of thought, and with its actual creations, as given in the works of minds most highly gifted with this function of the Intelligence.

CHAPTER XI.

REASON.

THE preceding Chapters have occupied more than the entire ground which is traversed in the common systems of Philosophy, so far as an analysis of the Intellectual Powers is concerned. Such an analysis, however, leaves untouched many of the more important phenomena of the human Mind. Consciousness and Sense, which lie at the foundation of all the faculties which have been the subject of the preceding analysis, can never give us infinite, eternal, absolute, universal, and necessary truths, nor can they account for the existence of the ideas of such truths in the Mind. Such phenomena demand the admission of another power, not supposed in the existence of conceptions of contingent and relative phenomena. These last might exist in a Mind totally destitute of a knowledge of universal and necessary truths.

Reason defined.

That faculty which apprehends truths, infinite, eternal, absolute, universal, and necessary, is the Reason. It bears precisely the same relation to such truths, that Consciousness and Sense do to contingent phenomena. Like those faculties, all its affirmations are direct and intuitive.

Coleridge's Characteristics of Reason as distinguished from the Understanding.

Coleridge has taken great pains to establish and elucidate the distinction between the Reason and the Understanding, Before proceeding to a further analysis of the phenomena and functions of the former faculty, I will present some of the characteristics of these faculties-characteristics which

he has given to distinguish the one from the other. In giving their characteristics, I shall use the term Understanding in the sense in which Coleridge himself appears to use it, as including the Judgment as well as the notion-forming power. I desire this fact to be kept distinctly in mind. In all other parts of this Treatise I use the Understanding and Judgment in strict accordance with the definitions given in preceding Chapters. Here I use the term Understanding in accommo dation to the usage of the author whose distinctions I shall endeavor to elucidate. What then are the great distinctions between the Reason and Understanding, as laid down by this philosopher?

1. "The Understanding, in all its judgments, refers to some other faculty as its ultimate authority." "The Reason in all its decisions appeals to itself." Take as an illustration of the above distinction the following propositions: "This is a book." (6 Space is, or exists." The first proposition supposes three things in the Mind-the conception designated by the term book-the perception of the particular object, a judgment that the object corresponds to the conception, and a consequent subsumption of the object under the conception. Now this judgment is an affirmation of the Understanding. Is it self-affirmed, or is it based upon the authority of some other faculty? Ask the speaker, how he knows that this is a book? He refers at once to Sense ("I see it"), and to a notion of a class derived from previous perceptions. The same may be shown to be true of every other affirmation of the Understanding, or generalizing power.

Let us now look at the second proposition-Space is. On what authority is this affirmation made? Upon no other authority than that of the faculty which apprehends the idea. So of the proposition, "Every event has a cause." All men know it to be true. In all minds, however, the faculty which affirms it is the sole ground or reason of the affirmation. The same principle holds in respect to all the judgments of the pure Reason,

2. "The judgments of the Understanding admit of degrees. Those of the Reason preclude all degrees." In reference to some particular object of the perception, for example, under certain circumstances, we conjecture that it is a man; under others, we believe it to be a man; under others, we are sure that it is; and under others still, we know it to be a man,

&c. But who merely conjectures or believes that every event has a cause? We know it absolutely. In respect to this subject, the affirmation of the child and of the man, of the philosopher and of the peasant, are equally positive, and equally preclude all degrees.

3. The laws which govern the Understanding in all its judgments are imposed upon it by the Reason; while the Reason and its own laws are identical, or rather, the laws of the Reason are self-imposed. I feel, for example, a painful sensation. Instantly I apply my Understanding to determine the particular cause. By what law is my Understanding governed, under such circumstances? By an idea or law, certainly, which exists, not in the Understanding itself, to wit, the affirmation of the pure Reason, that every event must have a cause. The same is true in regard to all other inquiries and affirmations of the Understanding, in regard to material substances. It obeys laws prescribed by another faculty. The Reason, however, obeys no laws but those which are self-imposed. When the Reason affirms absolutely that every event must have a cause-that succession supposes time and that body supposes space, what law prescribed by another faculty or faculties does the Reason obey in such affirmations? None, surely.

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4. All the judgments of the Understanding are contingent. All the affirmations of the Reason are universal and necessary. I have before me, I will suppose, a right-angled triangle. I wish to know what relation exists between the square of the hypothenuse and the sum of the squares of the two sides. I first determine this question by actual measurement, and find that they are equal. I have now before me a particular fact. Why it is so, I know not, or whether this fact holds true in regard to other triangles, I know not. repeat the experiment upon similar triangles of various sizes, and find that they all give me precisely the same result. I very soon begin to conjecture that this fact holds true of all similar triangles. Repeated experiments ripen this conjecture into such a conviction as to preclude all doubt. Still there is no certain knowledge. Nor does there appear any necessity, from the nature of the subjects of these experiments, that the conclusions should not be different from what they are. Now let a person, in whose mind the principles of Geometry are developed, construct a figure and demonstrate the fact under consideration, in respect to that one particular

triangle. What is the conclusion deduced from this demonstration? Not only that this fact holds in regard to this particular triangle, but that it does and must hold true in regard to all other similar triangles. In the former instance, we obtained a particular, contingent truth, as conceived by the Mind. In the latter we obtained a truth, universal and necessary.

5. The "Understanding is discursive.” "The Reason is fixed." The judgments of the Understanding admit of degrees, and are perpetually passing and repassing from mere conjecture to positive affirmation; from doubt and disbelief to positive faith, and the opposite. The decisions of the Reason, however, have ever been characterized by the total absence of all degrees. They are, and always have been, positive, absolute affirmations.

6. The Understanding, considered as using the faculties of Sense, Consciousness, and Reason, is the faculty of observation and reflection. "Reason is the faculty of contemplation." The Understanding, through Sense and Consciousness, observes and reflects upon the phenomena given by these faculties, for the purpose of forming notions, and for purposes of classification and generalization. The Reason, on the other hand, being the direct aspect and inward beholding of truth, and the truths which it thus, by direct intuition, apprehends, being the same "yesterday, to-day, and forever," cannot properly be said to observe and reflect, but rather to contemplate. There it remains fixed--awed, and held by the direct contemplation of the infinite, the necessary, and the universal.

8. The Understanding is the faculty of believing. The Reason is the faculty of knowing. Those who have never been in London or Paris, believe, with greater or less degrees of confidence, according to their knowledge of the facts, that there are such cities in existence. Yet they cannot, with strict propriety, be said to know these facts. But every person, in whose mind Reason exists at all, knows absolutely that space is that every event must have a cause, &c.

The above distinctions, most of which are specifically stated, though none of them are illustrated, by Coleridge, not only distinguish the Understanding and Judgment from the Reason, but tend to elucidate the functions of each. I will now proceed directly to a further elucidation of the functions of Reason.

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