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COLERIDGE's WRITINGS General Editor: John Beer Volume 4: on Religion and Psychology COLERIDGE’S WRITINGS General Editor: John Beer Volume 4: On Religion and Psychology COLERIDGE’S WRITINGS Myriad-minded in his intellectual interests, Coleridge often passed quickly from one subject to another, so that the range and mass of the materials he left can be bewildering to later readers. Coleridge’s Writings is a series addressed to those who wish to have a guide to his important statements on particular subjects. Each volume presents his writings in a major field of human knowledge or thought, tracing the development of his ideas. Connections are also made with relevant writings in the period, suggesting the extent to which Coleridge was either summing up, contributing to or reacting against current developments. Each volume is produced by a specialist in the field; the general editor is John Beer, Professor of English Literature at Cambridge, who has published various studies of Coleridge’s thought and poetry. Volume 1 On Politics and Society edited by John Morrow Volume 2 On Humanity edited by Anya Taylor Volume 3 On Language edited by A. C. Goodson Volume 4 On Religion and Psychology edited by John Beer Coleridge’s Writings Volume 4 On Religion and Psychology Edited by John Beer Emeritus Professor of English Literature University of Cambridge and Fellow of Peterhouse Editorial matter and selection © John Beer 2002 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2002 978-0-333-73490-2 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2002 by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St. Martin’s Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). ISBN 978-1-349-40814-6 ISBN 978-0-230-50131-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230501317 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10987654321 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 Contents Foreword vii List of Abbreviations ix Coleridge’s Life x Introduction 1 1 The Early Intellectual Quest 3 2 A Religion of Life? 29 3 Self-Examinings 46 4 Psychological Speculations 60 5 The Existence and Nature of God 82 6 Questions of Evil and the Will 110 7 ‘Science, Freedom and the Truth . ’ 128 8 Original Sin and the True Reason 154 9 Doctrines and Illuminations 179 10 Other Faiths 203 Conclusions 230 Notes 258 Index 267 v This page intentionally left blank Foreword The appearance of hitherto unpublished material in the last hundred years has brought out more fully the range and complexity of Coleridge’s intelligence and knowledge. The Notebooks and Collected Works, both now well on the way to completion, together with the Collected Letters, have made it increasingly evident that this was the most extraordinary English mind of the time. The specialist or more general student who wishes to know what Coleridge had to say on a particular subject may, however, find the sheer mass of materials bewildering, since in his less formal writings he passed quickly from one subject to another. Coleridge’s Writings is a series addressed to such readers. In each volume a particular area of Coleridge’s interest is explored, with an attempt to present his most significant statements and to show the development of his thought on the subject in question. Of all the multifarious interests Coleridge showed in his career religion could be said to have been the deepest and most lasting. Intended originally for the Church, he remained preoccupied by his thinking on the subject for long stretches of his life, particularly during his later years. Even his poetry—for which he is of course best known—cannot fully be understood without taking this substratum into account. He was also, to a degree quite unusual in his time, preoccupied by the life of the mind. Accordingly, while the attempt here is to present a con- spectus of his religious thinking the chief focus is on that area where it ran side by side with psychological inquiry. The shifts in his intellectual and religious positions were marked by varying amounts of attention to religion in his writings. During the early years there were a few notebook entries and letters, coupled with his writing for the 1795 Lectures in Bristol. During the years of dialogue with Wordsworth, comments of a religious nature were spread across notebooks, letters and general writings; following the Malta years the Christian element intensified, particularly with the writing of The Friend. Whereas in other volumes of this series the materials have been reasonably limited, here they overflow abundantly. There are many entries in the notebooks and marginal comments in religious books, his new absorption being marked both by the Lay Sermons and then by his most important published work on the subject, the Aids to Reflection. vii viii Foreword Concurrent with his work towards this came a great deal of criticism of and commentary on the Bible—so much so that it is hoped to produce another volume of Coleridge’s Writings devoted exclusively to it. In his last years he was increasingly exercised by the desire to produce a significant religious work: his ‘Opus Maximum’, sometimes referred to as his ‘Assertion of Religion’. At the time of compilation of the present volume this was still unpublished in full, though a number of extracts had appeared in other places. The serious student of Coleridge’s religious thought will want to consult the new volume—particularly on topics such as the Trinity—but it will in itself be so extensive as to preclude the extracting of more than one or two passages for a volume such as this. In the same way, topics raised in this volume can in many cases be pursued at greater length in the pages of works such as The Friend, the Lectures on the History of Philosophy or On the Constitution of the Church and State. Here, as always, the editorial work in the Princeton edition will be found invaluable by the reader who wishes to inquire further. I wish to express my gratitude to Princeton University Press and Oxford University Press for permission to reproduce extracts from Coleridgean texts; to Samantha Harvey for assistance with selection of extracts from the Letters; and to Hazel Dunn for help with the preparation of the typescript. J. B. B. General Editor List of Abbreviations AR Coleridge, Aids to Reflection [1825], ed. John Beer, CC 9 (1993) BL Coleridge, Biographia Literaria [1817], ed. James Engell and Walter Jackson Bate, CC 7 (2 vols. 1983) CC The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, general ed. Kathleen Coburn, associate ed. Bart Winer (Princeton N.J. and London 1969–) CL Coleridge, Collected Letters, ed. E.L. Griggs (6 vols., Oxford 1956–71) CM Coleridge, Marginalia, ed. George Whalley, CC 12 (5 vols. so far published out of a projected 6, 1980–) CN Coleridge, Notebooks, ed. Kathleen Coburn (4 vols. so far published out of a projected 5, Princeton, N.J. and London 1959–; volume 5 from draft) C&S Coleridge, On the Constitution of the Church and State [1829], ed. John Colmer, CC 10 (1976) Friend Coleridge, The Friend [1809–18], ed. Barbara Rooke, CC 4 (2 vols. 1969) HW The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, ed. P.P. Howe (21 vols. 1930–4) Lects (1795) Coleridge, Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion, ed. Lewis Patton and Peter Mann, CC 1 (1971) LS Coleridge, Lay Sermons [1816–17], ed. R.J. White, CC 6 (1972) PW (Beer) Coleridge, Poems, ed. J.B. Beer, new edn, Everyman (2000) SWF Coleridge, Shorter Works and Fragments, ed. H.J. Jackson and J.R. de J. Jackson, CC 11 (1995) TT Coleridge, Table Talk, ed. Carl Woodring, CC 14 (2 vols. 1990) 〈 〉 Coleridge’s additions to his text [ ] Matter added by editor ix Coleridge’s Life The following outline records some crucial events in Coleridge’s career, particularly in relation to his writings on religion. Full chronologies are printed in the various volumes of the Princeton Collected Coleridge. 1772 Coleridge born (21 October). 1781 (Oct) Death of Coleridge’s father. 1782 (until 1791) School at Christ’s Hospital, London. 1791 (until late 1794) At Jesus College, Cambridge. 1794 (June) Welsh tour; meeting with Southey at Oxford initiates pantisocratic scheme. 1795 (Jan) Bristol Lectures begun; (May–June) ‘Six Lectures on Revealed Religion’. (Oct) Marriage to Sara Fricker. (Dec) Conciones ad Populum; The Plot Discovered. 1796 (March–May) The Watchman. (June) Visits William and Dorothy Wordsworth at Racedown in Dorset. (Sept) Hartley Coleridge born. 1797 (Nov) ‘The Ancient Mariner’ begun. 1798 (March) ‘The Ancient Mariner’ completed. (spring) Swiss cantons suppressed: ‘Recantation’ (later ‘France: an Ode’); ‘Fears in Solitude’. (May) Berkeley Coleridge born. (Sept) Lyrical Ballads published; to Germany with the Wordsworths.
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