Samuel Coleridge - The Complete Essays, Lectures & Letters of S. T. Coleridge (Illustrated)

Notwithstanding the arguments of Spinosa, and Descartes, and other advocates of the ‘Material system’, (or, in more appropriate language, the ‘Atheistical system!’) it is admitted by all men not prejudiced, not biassed by sceptical prepossessions, that ‘mind’ is distinct from ‘matter’. The mind of man, however, is involved in inscrutable darkness, (as the profoundest metaphysicians well know) and is to be estimated, (if at all) alone, by an inductive process; that is, by its ‘effects’. Without entering on the question, whether an extremely circumscribed portion of the mental process, surpassing instinct, may, or may not, be extended to quadrupeds, it is universally acknowledged, that the mind of man, alone, regulates all the voluntary actions of his corporeal frame. Mind, therefore, may be regarded as a distinct genus, in the scale ascending above brutes, and including the whole of intellectual existences; advancing from ‘thought’, (that mysterious thing!) in its lowest form, through all the gradations of sentient and rational beings, till it arrives at a Bacon, a Newton, and then, when unincumbered by matter, extending its illimitable sway through Seraph and Archangel, till we are lost in the GREAT INFINITE!

Is it not deserving of notice, as an especial subject of meditation, that our ‘limbs’, in all they do, or can accomplish, implicitly obey the dictation of the ‘mind’? that this operating power, whatever its name, under certain limitations, exercises a sovereign dominion, not only over our limbs, but over all our intellectual pursuits? The mind of every man is evidently the moving force, which alike regulates all his limbs and actions; and in which example, we find a strong illustration of the subordinate nature of mere ‘matter’. That alone which gives direction to the organic parts of our nature, is wholly ‘mind’; and one mind, if placed over a thousand limbs, could, with undiminished ease, control and regulate the whole.

This idea is advanced on the supposition, that ‘one mind’ could command an unlimited direction over any given number of ‘limbs’, provided they were all connected by ‘joint’ and ‘sinew’. But suppose, through some occult and inconceivable means, these limbs were dis-associated, as to all material connexion; suppose, for instance, one mind, with unlimited authority, governed the operations of ‘two’ separate persons, would not this, substantially, be only ‘one person’, seeing the directing principle was one? If the truth, here contended for, be admitted, that ‘two persons’, governed by ‘one mind’, is incontestably ‘one person’; the same conclusion would be arrived at, and the proposition equally be justified, which affirmed that, ‘three’, or, otherwise, ‘four’ persons, owning also necessary and essential subjection to ‘one mind’, would only be so many diversities, or modifications of that ‘one mind’, and therefore the component parts, virtually collapsing into ‘one whole’, the person would be ‘one’. Let any man ask himself, whose understanding can both reason, and become the depository of truth, whether, if ‘one mind’ thus regulated, with absolute authority, ‘three’, or, otherwise, ‘four’ persons, with all their congeries of material parts, would not these parts, inert in themselves, when subjected to one predominant mind, be, in the most logical sense, ‘one person’? Are ligament and exterior combination indispensable prerequisites to the sovereign influence of mind over mind? or mind over matter?

But perhaps it may be said, we have no instance of one mind governing more than one body. This may be, but the argument remains the same. With a proud spirit, that forgets its own contracted range of thought, and circumscribed knowledge, who is to limit the sway of Omnipotence? or, presumptuously to deny the possibility of ‘that’ Being, who called light out of darkness, so to exalt the dominion of ‘one mind’, as to give it absolute sway over other dependent minds, or (indifferently) over detached, or combined portions of organized matter? But if this superinduced quality be conferable on any order of created beings, it is blasphemy to limit the power of GOD, and to deny ‘his’ capacity to transfuse ‘his own’ Spirit, when, and to whom he will.

This reasoning may now be applied in illustration of the Trinity. We are too much in the habit of viewing our Saviour Jesus Christ, through the medium of his body. ‘A body was prepared for him,’ but this body was mere matter; as insensible in itself, as every human frame when deserted by the soul. If therefore the Spirit that was in Christ, was the Spirit of the Father: if no thought, no vibration, no spiritual communication, or miraculous display, existed in, or proceeded from Christ, not immediately and consubstantially identified with JEHOVAH, the Great First cause; if all these operating principles were thus derived, in consistency alone with the conjoint divine attributes; of this Spirit of the Father ruled and reigned in Christ as his own manifestation, then, in the strictest sense, Christ exhibited ‘the Godhead bodily,’ and was undeniably ‘‘one’ with the Father;’ confirmatory of the Saviour’s words; ‘Of myself,’ (my body) ‘I can do nothing, the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.’

But though I speak of the body, as inert in itself, and necessarily allied to matter, yet this declaration must not be understood as militating against the Christian doctrine of the ‘resurrection of the body’. In its grosser form, the thought is not to be admitted, for, ‘flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,’ but, that the body, without losing its consciousness, and individuality, may be subjected, by the illimitable power of Omnipotence, to a sublimating process, so as to be rendered compatible with spiritual association, is not opposed to reason, in its severe abstract exercises, while in attestation of this ‘exhilarating belief’, there are many remote analogies in nature exemplifying the same truth, while it is in the strictest accordance with that final dispensation, which must, as Christians, regulate all our speculations. I proceed now to say, that:

If the postulate be thus admitted, that one mind influencing two bodies, would only involve a diversity of operations, but in reality be one in essence; or otherwise, (as an hypothetical argument, illustrative of truth) if one preeminent mind, or spiritual subsistence, unconnected with matter, possessed an undivided and sovereign dominion over two or more disembodied minds, so as to become the exclusive source of all their subtlest volitions and exercises, the ‘unity’, however complex the modus of its manifestation, would be fully established; and this principle extends to DEITY itself, and shows the true sense, as I conceive, in which Christ and the Father are one.

In continuation of this reasoning, if God who is light, the Sun of the Moral World, should in his union of Infinite Wisdom, Power, and Goodness, and from all Eternity, have ordained that an emanation from himself (for aught we know, an essential emanation, as light is inseparable from the luminary of day) should not only have existed in his Son, in the fulness of time to be united to a mortal body, but that a like emanation from himself (also perhaps essential) should have constituted the Holy Spirit, who, without losing his ubiquity, was more especially sent to this lower earth, ‘by’ the SON, ‘at’ the impulse of the Father, then, in the most comprehensive sense, God, and his Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost, are ONE. ‘Three Persons in one God,’ and thus form the true Trinity in Unity.

To suppose that more than ONE Independent Power, or Governing mind exists in the whole universe, is absolute Polytheism, against which the denunciations of all the Jewish, and Christian Canonical books were directed. And if there be but ONE directing MIND, that Mind is GOD! — operating, however, in Three Persons, according to the direct and uniform declarations of that inspiration which ‘brought life and immortality to light.’ Yet this divine doctrine of the Trinity is to be received, not because it is, or can be clear to finite apprehension, but, (in reiteration of the argument) because the Scriptures, in their unsophisticated interpretation expressly state it. The Trinity, therefore, from its important aspects, and Biblical prominence, is the grand article of faith, and the foundation of the whole Christian system.