REASON AND UNDERSTANDING ACCORDING TO COLERIDGE.
There is a remarkable discrepancy in the statements of Coleridge respecting reason and understanding.
(1.) Friend, vol. i. pp. 207-8. (Pickering.)—
"That many animals possess a share of understanding perfectly distinguishable from mere instinct we all allow. Few persons have a favourite dog, without making instances of its intelligence an occasional topic of conversation. They call for our admiration of the individual animal, and not with exclusive reference to the wisdom in nature, as in the case of στοργὴ, or maternal instinct: or of the hexangular cells of the bees.... We hear little or nothing of the instincts of the 'half-reasoning elephant,' and as little of the understanding of caterpillars and butterflies."
Aids to Reflection, vol. i. pp 171-3. (Pickering.) Here, after quoting two instances from Hüber about bees and ants, he says,—
"Now I assert that the faculty in the acts here narrated does not differ in kind from understanding."
Does Coleridge mean to tell us that bees and ants have the same faculty (understanding) as dogs and elephants?
(2.) Friend, vol. i. pp. 216-7.—
"For a moment's steady self-reflection will show us that, in the simple determination 'black is not white,' or 'that two straight lines cannot include a space,' all the powers are implied that distinguish man from animals; first, the power of reflection; second, of comparison; third, and therefore suspension of the mind; fourth, therefore of a controlling will, and the power of acting from notions, instead of mere images exciting appetites; from motives, and not from mere dark instinct."
And after relating a story about a dog who appeared to have employed the disjunctive syllogism (in relation to which see Cottle's Reminiscences, vol. i. pp. 48-9.), Coleridge remarks,—
"So awful and almost miraculous does the simple act of concluding 'take three from four, and there remains one,' appear to us, when attributed to one of the most sagacious of all brute animals."
Aids to Reflection, vol. i. p. 175.—
"Understanding is the faculty of reflection, reason of contemplation." And p. 176.—"The understanding, then, considered exclusively as an organ of human intelligence, is the faculty by which we reflect and generalise.... The whole process [of the understanding] may be reduced to three acts, all depending on, and supposing a previous impression on, the senses: first, the appropriation of our attention; second (and in order to the continuance of the first), abstraction, or the voluntary withholding of the attention; and, third, generalisation; and these are the proper functions of the understanding."
Aids to Reflection, vol. i. p. 182. note.—
"So far, and no further, could the understanding carry us; and so far as this, 'the faculty judging according to sense' conducts many of the inferior animals, if not in the same, yet in instances analogous and fully equivalent."
Does Coleridge, then, mean us to understand him as saying, that many of the brutes can reflect, abstract, and generalise?
(3.) Friend, vol. i. p. 259.—
"Reason! best and holiest gift of God, and bond of union with the Giver; the high title by which the majesty of man claims precedence above all other living creatures—mysterious faculty, the mother of conscience, of language...."
Aids to Reflection, vol. i. pp. 176-182.—Coleridge here gives his reasons for considering language a property of the understanding; and, in p. 195., adds,—
"It is, however, by no means equally clear to me that the dog may not possess an analogon of words which I have elsewhere shown to be the proper objects of the 'faculty judging according to sense.'"
Does Coleridge mean that the inferior animals may have language?
Who, of your many able correspondents, will assist me in unravelling this complicated tissue?
C. Mansfield Ingleby.