Give my kind love to Mrs. Green. Mr. and Mrs. Gillman are anxious to see you. I assure you they were very much affected by the account of your health. Young Allsop behaves more like a dutiful and anxious son than an acquaintance. He came up yester-night at ten o'clock, and left the house at eight this morning, in order to urge me to go to some sea-bathing place, if it was thought at all advisable.
Derwent goes on in every respect to my satisfaction and comfort.
Again and again, God bless you and your sincerely affectionate friend,
MY DEAR SIR,--"They say, Coleridge! that you are a Swedenborgian!" "Would to God," I replied fervently, "that _they_ were _anything_." I was writing a brief essay on the prospects of a country where it has become the _mind_ of the nation to appreciate the evil of public acts and measures by their next consequences or immediate occasions, while the _principle_ violated, or that _a_ principle is thereby violated, is either wholly dropped out of the consideration, or is introduced but as a garnish or ornamental commonplace in the peroration of a speech! The deep interest was present to my thoughts of that distinction between the _Reason_, as the source of principles, the true celestial influx and _porta Dei in hominem æternum_, and the _Understanding_; with the clearness of the proof, by which this distinction is evinced, viz. that vital or zoo-organic power, instinct, and understanding fall all three under the same definition _in genere_, and the very additions by which the definition is applied from the first to the second, and from the second to the third, are themselves expressive of degrees only, and in degree only deniable of the preceding. (_Ex. gr._ 1. Reflect on the _selective_ power exercised by the stomach of the caterpillar on the undigested miscellany of food, and, 2, the same power exercised by the caterpillar on the outward plants, and you will see the order of the conceptions.) 1. Vital Power = the power by which _means are adapted_ to proximate ends. 2. Instinct = the power _which adapts_ means to proximate ends. 3. Understanding = the power which adapts means to proximate ends according _to varying circumstances_. May I not safely challenge any man to peruse Huber's "Treatise on Ants," and yet deny their claim to be included in the last definition. But try to apply the same definition, with any extension of degree, to the reason, the absurdity will flash upon the conviction. First, in reason there is and can be no _degree_. _Deus introit aut non introit._ Secondly, in reason there are no _means_ nor ends, reason itself being one with the ultimate end, of which it is _the_ manifestation. Thirdly, reason has no concern with _things_ (that is, the impermanent flux of particulars), but with the permanent _Relations_; and is to be defined even in its lowest or theoretical attribute, as the power which enables man to draw _necessary_ and _universal_ conclusions from particular facts or forms, _ex. gr._ from any three-cornered thing, that the two sides of a triangle are and must be greater than the third. From the understanding to the reason, there is no continuous _ascent_ possible; it is a metabasis [Greek: eis allo genos] even as from the air to the light. The true essential peculiarity of the human understanding consists in its capability of being irradiated by the reason, in its recipiency; and even this is _given_ to it by the presence of a higher power than itself. What then must be the fate of a nation that substitutes Locke for logic, and Paley for morality, and one or the other for polity and theology, according to the predominance of Whig or Tory predilection. Slavery, or a commotion is at hand! But if the gentry and _clerisy_ (including all the learned and educated) do this, then the nation does it, _or_ a commotion is at hand. _Acephalum_ enim, aurâ quamvis et calore vitali potiatur, morientem rectius dicimus, quam quod vivit. With these thoughts was I occupied when I received your very kind and most acceptable present, and the results I must defer to the next post. With best regards to Mrs. Tulk,