[103] It has in its consequences proved no trifling evil to the Christian world, that Aristotle's Definitions of Nature are all grounded on the petty and rather rhetorical than philosophical Antithesis of Nature to Art—a conception inadequate to the demands even of his philosophy. Hence in the progress of his reasoning, he confounds the natura naturata (that is, the sum total of the facts and phænomena of the Senses) with an hypothetical natura naturans, a Goddess Nature, that has no better claim to a place in any sober system of Natural Philosophy than the Goddess Multitudo; yet to which Aristotle not rarely gives the name and attributes of the Supreme Being. The result was, that the idea of God thus identified with this hypothetical Nature becomes itself but an hypothesis, or at best but a precarious inference from incommensurate premises and on disputable principles: while in other passages, God is confounded with (and every where, in Aristotle's genuine works, included in) the Universe: which most grievous error it is the great and characteristic merit of Plato to have avoided and denounced.
[104] Take one passage among many from the posthumous Tracts (1660) of John Smith,[105] not the least star in that bright constellation of Cambridge men, the contemporaries of Jeremy Taylor. "While we reflect on our idea of Reason, we know that our Souls are not it, but only partake of it; and that we have it κατα μεθεξιν and not κατ᾽ ουσιην. Neither can it be called a Faculty, but far rather a Light, which we enjoy, but the Source of which is not in ourselves, nor rightly by any individual to be denominated mine." This pure, intelligence he then proceeds to contrast with the Discursive Faculty, that is, the Understanding.
[105] There is a Note on John Smith and his 'Select Discourses' in Coleridge's 'Literary Remains,' 1838, v. iii. pp. 415-19.—Ed.
[106] See Coleridge on Jeremy Taylor: 'Literary Remains,' 1838, v. iii. pp. 295-334, &c.—Ed.
[107] We have the assurance of Bishop Horsley, that the Church of England does not demand the literal understanding of the document contained in the second (from verse 8) and third Chapters of Genesis as a point of faith, or regard a different interpretation as affecting the orthodoxy of the interpreter; divines of the most unimpeachable orthodoxy, and the most averse to the allegorizing of Scripture history in general, having from the earliest ages of the Christian Church adopted or permitted it in this instance. And indeed no unprejudiced man can pretend to doubt, that if in any other work of Eastern origin he met with Trees of Life and of Knowledge; talking and conversable snakes:
Inque rei signum serpentem serpere jussum;
he would want no other proofs that it was an allegory he was reading, and intended to be understood as such. Nor, if we suppose him conversant with Oriental works of any thing like the same antiquity, could it surprise him to find events of true history in connexion with, or historical personages among the actors and interlocutors of, the parable. In the temple-language of Egypt the serpent was the symbol of the understanding in its twofold function, namely as the faculty of means to proximate or medial, ends, analogous to the instinct of the more intelligent animals, ant, bee, beaver, and the like, and opposed to the practical reason, as the determinant of the ultimate end; and again, it typifies the understanding as the discursive and logical faculty possessed individually by each individual—the λογος εν ἑκαστω, in distinction from the νους, that is, intuitive reason, the source of ideas and ABSOLUTE Truths, and the principle of the necessary and the universal in our affirmations and conclusions. Without or in contra-vention to the reason (i.e. the spiritual mind of St. Paul, and the light that lighteth every man of St. John) this understanding (φρονημα σαρκος, or carnal mind) becomes the sophistic principle, the wily tempter to evil by counterfeit good; the pander and advocate of the passions and appetites; ever in league with, and always first applying to, the Desire, as the inferior nature in man, the woman in our humanity; and through the Desire prevailing on the Will (the Man-hood, Virtus) against the command of the universal reason, and against the light of reason in the Will itself. This essential inherence of an intelligential principle (φως νοερον) in the Will (αρχη φελητικη) or rather the Will itself thus considered, the Greeks expressed by an appropriate word βουλη. This, but little differing from Origen's interpretation or hypothesis, is supported and confirmed by the very old tradition of the homo androgynus, that is, that the original man, the individual first created, was bi-sexual: a chimæra, of which and of many other mythological traditions the most probable explanation is, that they were originally symbolical glyphs or sculptures, and afterwards translated into words, yet literally, that is into the common names of the several figures and images composing the symbol, while the symbolic meaning was left to be deciphered as before, and sacred to the initiate. As to the abstruseness and subtlety of the conceptions, this is so far from being an objection to this oldest gloss on this venerable relic of Semitic, not impossibly ante-diluvian, philosophy, that to those who have carried their researches farthest back into Greek, Egyptian, Persian, and Indian antiquity, it will seem a strong confirmation. Or if I chose to address the sceptic in the language of the day, I might remind him, that as alchemy went before chemistry, and astrology before astronomy, so in all countries of civilized man have metaphysics outrun common sense. Fortunately for us that they have so! For from all we know of the unmetaphysical tribes of New Holland and elsewhere, a common sense not preceded by metaphysics is no very enviable possession. O be not cheated, my youthful reader, by this shallow prate! The creed of true common sense is composed of the results of scientific meditation, observation, and experiment, as far as they are generally intelligible. It differs therefore in different countries and in every different age of the same country. The common sense of a people is the moveable index of its average judgment and information. Without metaphysics science could have had no language, and common sense no materials.
But to return to my subject. It cannot be denied, that the Mosaic Narrative thus interpreted gives a just and faithful exposition of the birth and parentage and successive moments of phænomenal sin (peccatum phænomenon; crimen primarium et commune), that is, of sin as it reveals itself in time, and is an immediate object of consciousness. And in this sense most truly does the Apostle assert, that in Adam we all fell. The first human sinner is the adequate representative of all his successors. And with no less truth may it be said, that it is the same Adam that falls in every man, and from the same reluctance to abandon the too dear and undivorceable Eve: and the same Eve tempted by the same serpentine and perverted understanding, which, framed originally to be the interpreter of the reason and the ministering angel of the Spirit, is henceforth sentenced and bound over to the service of the Animal Nature, its needs and its cravings, dependent on the senses for all its materials, with the World of Sense for its appointed sphere: Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. I have shown elsewhere, that as the Instinct of the mere intelligence differs in degree not in kind, and circumstantially, not essentially, from the vis vitæ, or vital power in the assimilative and digestive functions of the stomach and other organs of nutrition, even so the Understanding, in itself and distinct from the Reason and Conscience, differs in degree only from the Instinct in the animal. It is still but a beast of the field, though more subtle than any beast of the field, and therefore in its corruption and perversion cursed above any—a pregnant word! of which, if the reader wants an exposition or paraphrase, he may find one more than two thousand years old among the fragments of the poet Menander. (See Cumberland's Observer, No. CL. vol. iii. p. 289 290.) This is the Understanding which in its every thought is to be brought under obedience to Faith; which it can scarcely fail to be, if only it be first subjected to the Reason, of which spiritual Faith is even the blossoming and the fructifying process. For it is indifferent whether I say that Faith is the interpenetration of the Reason and the Will, or that it is at once the Assurance and the Commencement of the approaching Union between the Reason and the intelligible realities, the living and substantial truths, that are even in this life its most proper objects.
I have thus put the reader in possession of my own opinions respecting the narrative in Gen. ii. and iii. Εστιν ουν δη, ὡς εμοιγε δοκει, ἱερος μυθος, αληθεστατον και αρχαιτατον φιλοσοφημα, ευσεβεσι μεν σεβασμα, συνετοις τε φωναν· ες δε το παν ἑρμηνεως χατιζει. Or I might ask with Augustine, Why not both? Why not at once symbol and history? or rather how should it be otherwise? Must not of necessity the first man be a Symbol of Mankind, in the fullest force of the word, Symbol, rightly defined—that is, a sign included in the idea, which it represents;—an actual part chosen to represent the whole, as a lip with a chin prominent is a symbol of man; or a lower form or species used as the representative of a higher in the same kind: thus Magnetism is the Symbol of Vegetation, and of the vegetative and reproductive power in animals; the Instinct of the ant-tribe, or the bee, is a symbol of the human understanding. And this definition of the word is of great practical importance, inasmuch as the symbolical is hereby distinguished toto genere from the allegoric and metaphorical. But, perhaps, parables, allegories, and allegorical or typical applications, are incompatible with inspired Scripture! The writings of St. Paul are sufficient proof of the contrary. Yet I readily acknowledge, that allegorical applications are one thing, and allegorical interpretation another: and that where there is no ground for supposing such a sense to have entered into the intent and purpose of the sacred penman, they are not to be commended. So far, indeed, am I from entertaining any predilection for them, or any favourable opinion of the Rabbinical commentators and traditionists, from whom the fashion was derived, that in carrying it as far as our own Church has carried it, I follow her judgment, not my own. But in the first place, I know but one other part of the Scriptures not universally held to be parabolical, which, not without the sanction of great authorities, I am disposed to regard as an Apologue or Parable, namely, the book of Jonah; the reasons for believing the Jewish nation collectively to be therein impersonated, seeming to me unanswerable. Secondly, as to the Chapters now in question—that such interpretation is at least tolerated by our Church, I have the word of one of her most zealous champions. And lastly it is my deliberate and conscientious conviction, that the proofs of such having been the intention of the inspired writer or compiler of the book of Genesis, lie on the face of the narrative itself.
[108] Rom. v. 14. Who were they, who had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression; and over whom, notwithstanding, death reigned?