SOURCE: "Isaac Newton," in Coleridge on the Seventeenth Century, edited by Roberta Florence Brinkley, Duke University Press, 1955, pp. 399-408.

[In the following excerpts, which are taken from various published and unpublished sources, including letters and notes written in the margins of books, Coleridge comments on Newton's debt to Johannes Kepler, criticizes Newton's Opticks, and notes that Newton's Observations on the biblical books of Daniel and Revelations are "little less than mere raving." Given the variety of sources from which these observations are drawn, the date assigned is based on the year of Coleridge's death.]

Galileo was a great genius, and so was Newton; but it would take two or three Galileos and Newtons to make one Kepler. It is in the order of Providence, that the inventive, generative, constitutive mind—the Kepler—should come first; and then that the patient and collective mind—the Newton—should follow, and elaborate the pregnant queries and illumining guesses of the former. The laws of the planetary system are, in fact, due to Kepler. There is not a more glorious achievement of scientific genius upon record, than Kepler's guesses, prophecies, and ultimate apprehension of the law of the mean distances of the planets as connected with the periods of their revolutions round the sun. Gravitation, too, he had fully conceived; but, because it seemed inconsistent with some received observations on light, he gave it up, in allegiance, as he says, to Nature. Yet the idea vexed and haunted his mind; "Vexat me et lacessit," are his words, I believe.⁷

When, however, after a short interval, the Genius of Kepler, expanded and organized in the soul of Newton, and there (if I may hazard so bold an expression) refining itself into an almost celestial Clearness, had expelled the Cartesian Vortices, then the necessity of an active power, of positive forces present in the Material Universe, forced itself on the conviction. For as a Law without a Law-giver is a mere abstraction; so a Law without an Agent to realize it, a Constitution without an abiding Executive, is, in fact, not a Law but an Idea!⁸

In the system of gravity, Newton only developed the idea of Kepler. He advanced a step, and there he fixed his followers. Kepler would have progressed, or have been stationary in act at least.⁹

What a thing, what a living thing is not Shakespeare—and in point of real utility I look on Sir Isaac Newton as a very puny agent compared with Milton—and I have taken some pains with the comparison and disputed with transient conviction for hours together in favour of the former.¹⁰

Newton was a great man,. but you must excuse me if I think that it would take many Newtons to make one Milton.¹¹

My opinion is this—that deep Thinking is attainable only by a man of deep Feeling, and that all Truth is a species of Revelation. The more I understand of Sir Isaac Newton's works, the more boldly I dare utter to my own mind, & therefore to you, that I believe the Souls of 500 Sir Isaac Newtons would go to the making up of a Shakespere or a Milton. But if it please the Almighty to grant me health, hope, and a steady mind, (always the 3 clauses of my hourly prayers) before my 30th year I will thoroughly understand the whole of Newton's Works—at present, I must content myself with endeavouring to make myself entire master of his easier work, that on Optics. I am exceedingly delighted with the beauty and newness of his experiments, & with the accuracy of his immediate Deductions from them—but the opinions founded on these Deductions, and indeed his whole Theory is, I am persuaded, so exceedingly superficial as without impropriety to be deemed false. Newton was a mere materialist—mind, in his system is always passive,—a lazy Looker-on on an external World. If the mind be not passive, if it be indeed made in God's Image, & that too in the sublimest sense—the Image of the Creator—there is ground for suspicion, that any system built on the passiveness of the mind must be false, as a system."¹²

Even where, as in the Optics of Sir I. Newton, or rather in that part of the Newtonian optics which relates to colour, the premises are derived from experiment, the facts must have been proved before the scientific reasoning begins. In reference both to the process and to the result or product of science and as far as the knowledge is scientific, there is no difference in the character of the premises. Whether self evident, or the evident result of some other science grounded on self evident truths, or prepared for the occasion by observation, or experiment, the premises occupy the same place & exercise the same function as premises of a science. For if they were not (expostulata and prœconcessa) demanded on the one side & preconceded on the other, the science could not have commenced; it would have perished in birth.¹³

Sir Isaac Newton at the end of the last edition of his Optics, supposes that a very subtile & elastic fluid, which he calls æther, is diffused thro' the pores of gross bodies, as well as thro' the open spaces that are void of gross matter; he supposes it to pierce all bodies, and to touch their least particles, acting on them with a force proportional to their number or to the matter of the body on which it acts. He supposes likewise, that it is rarer in the pores of bodies than in open spaces, & even rarer in small pores and dense bodies, than in large pores and rare bodies; & also that its density increases in receding from gross matter; so for instance as to be greater at the 1/100 of an inch from the surface of any body, than at its surface; & so on. To the action of this æther he ascribes the attractions of gravitation & cohæsion, the attraction & repulsion of electrical bodies, the mutual influences of bodies & light upon each other, the effects & communication of heat, & the performance of animal sensation & motion. David Hartley from whom this account of æther is chiefly borrowed, makes it the instrument of propagating those vibrations or confygurative motions which are ideas. As it appears to me, no hypothesis ever involved so many contradictions: for how can the same fluid be both dense & rare in the same body at one time? yet in the Earth as gravitating to the Moon, it must be very rare; & in the Earth as gravitating to the Sun, it must be very dense. For, as Andrew Baxter well observes, it doth not appear sufficient to account how this fluid may act with a force proportional to the body to which another is impelled, to assert that it is rarer in great bodies than in small ones: it must be farther asserted that this fluid is rarer or denser in the same body, whether small or great, according as the body to which that is impelled is itself small or great. But whatever may be the solidity of this objection, the following seems unanswerable.

If every particle thro' the whole solidity of a heavy body, receive its impulse from the particles of this fluid, it should seem that the fluid itself must be as dense as the very densest heavy body, gold for instance; there being as many impinging particles in the one, as there are gravitating particles in the other which receive their gravitation by being impinged upon: so that, throwing gold or any heavy body upward, against the impulse of this fluid, would be like throwing gold thro' gold; and as this æther must be equally diffused over the whole sphere of its activity, it must be as dense when it impels cork as when it impels gold: so that to throw a piece of cork upward, would be as if we endeavoured to make cork penetrate a medium as dense as gold: & tho' we were to adopt the extravagant opinions which have been advanced concerning the progressions of pores, yet however porous we suppose a body, if it be not all pore, the argument holds equally; the fluid must be as dense as the body in order to give every particle its impulse.

It has been asserted that Sir Isaac Newtons philosophy leads in its consequences to Atheism; perhaps not without reason, for if matter by any powers or properties given to it, can produce the order of the visible world, & even generate thought; why may it not have possessed such properties by inherent right? & where is the necessity of a God? Matter is, according to the mechanic philosophy, capable of acting most wisely & most beneficently without consciousness of Wisdom or Benevolence; & what more does the Atheist assert? if matter could possess these properties, why might it not possess them from all eternity? Sir Isaac Newtons Deity seems to be alternately operose & indolent, to have delegated so much power as to make it inconceivable what he can have reserved. He is dethroned by Vice-regent second causes.

We seem placed here to acquire a knowledge of effects. Whenever we would pierce into the Adyta of Causation, we bewilder ourselves—and all, that laborious Conjecture can do, is to fill up the gaps of Imagination. We are restless, because invisible things are not the objects of vision—and philosophical Systems, for the most part, are received not for their Truth, but in proportion as they give to Causes a susceptibility of being seen, whenever our visual organs shall have become sufficiently powerful.¹⁴

I am anxious to leave the specific objections of the Mathematicians to Goethe's Farbenlehre as far as it is an attack on the assumptions of Newton. To me, I confess, Newton's assumptions, first, of a Ray of Light, as a physical synodical Individuum, secondly that 7 specific individua are co-existent (by what copula?) in this complex yet divisible Ray; thirdly, that the Prism is a mere mechanic Dissector of this Ray; and lastly, that Light, as the common result, is = confusion; have always, and years before I ever heard of Goethe, appeared monstrous Fictions!¹⁵

Oken, L., ERSTE IDEEN ZUR THEORIE DES LICHTES (Jena: 1808), p. 14.

Es ist nichts leichter, als Newtons Optik zu widerlegen, ohne allen Apparat, mit einigen Prismen von ganz gemeinen Glase, mit Linsen, gefarbtem Papier nebst einem finstern Zimmer ist alles abgethan; mehr aber wird erfodert, um die wahre Theorie des Lichtes durch Versuche zu beweisen, weil das Licht nicht in einem bloss mechanischen Brechen, Ablenken, Zerstreuen der Stralen besteht, sondern in einem chemischen Act, der bis ins Innerste der Materie wirkt und sie verändert, nicht etwas bloss durch Erwärmung, also Ausdehnung; sondern durch geistige Action durch Polarisirungen, aus denen chemische Anderungen hervorgehen. Ich spreche hier stark und hart aber nicht ungerecht gegen Newton, nur um die Gelehrten mit Ernst auf die bisher gänze Theorie des Lichtes aufmerksam zu machen. In der Folge werde ich Newtons Lehre ganz ruhig widerlegen.

Good heavens! how much more good would Oken have done, how much more both wit and wisdom would have been displayed, if instead of this rough Railing and d—n-your-eyes-you-lie Ipsedixits, he had begun with this "quite quiet confutation of the Newtonian Doctrine," especially it being so very easy a task! Goethe (not indeed "ganz ruhig") had attempted it in detail both by impeachment of Newton's Experiments, and by Counter-experiments of his own. And yet G. himself confesses, that he had not succeeded in convincing or converting a single Mathematician, not even among his own friends and Intimates! That a clear and sober Confutation of Newton's Theory of Colors is practicable, the exceeding unsatisfied state, in which Sir I. Newton's first Book of Optics leaves my mind—strongly persuades me. And it is Oken's mountebank Boasting and Threatening that alone makes me sceptical as to his own ability to perform the promise, here given by him. S. T. C. P. s. I readily admit, that the full exhibition of another Theory adequate to the Sum of the Phænomena, and grounded on more safe and solid principles, would virtually be the best confutation—but no one who knows [left unfinished].

Oken, ERSTE IDEEN, p. 40.

Goethe, & then Schelling & Steffens, had opposed to the Newtonian Optics the ancient doctrine of Light and Shadow on the grand principle of Polarity—Yellow being the positive, Blue the negative, Pole, Red the Culmination and Green, the Indifference. Oken follows them—but stop! He waits till they are out of sight—Hangs out a new Banner (i. e. metaphors) and becomes a Leader himself.¹⁶

de Boyer, KABBALISTISCHE BRIEFE, IV, 114-15.

In truth sage and wise Abukibak, the greatest Geometricians have been obliged to abandon in Physics their principal demonstration. We see for instance one example in Newton: although Geometry showed him the infinite divisibility of matter, as a Physicist he dared not acknowledge it; he felt what a repugnance he had to the divisibility of matter not stopping at a certain point. He admitted the atoms of Epicurus; and sustained that it was impossible to divide into several parts what had originally been made one by the disposition of God himself.

What philosophic mathematician ever supposed Geometry to be anything else, than a system of the conceivable and inconceivable in the mind's constructive Intuitions? It is wholly ideal. Newton's solid atoms are utter aliens from Geometry, in which the mind exclusively contemplates it's own energies; and applies them not otherwise, than hypothetically. Newton erred by introducing Dogmatic Realism into the Ideal World. Solid atoms are not an hypothesis, as Gravity is; but a mere Hypopoësis.¹⁷

Various are the difficulties that oppose themselves to my comprehension of the Newtonian Theory of Comets. Some of these admit seemingly of a more natural solution on the Helvetian Hypothesis (= the old Aristotelian idea rectified and expanded by it's adaptation to the Copernican System) that the substance of Comets is meteoric and their curve of motion a parabola. For the moment, therefore, they throw some weight into the Helvetian Scale: tho' I have not the smallest doubt that all against all, the latter would kick the beam. Some of these difficulties relate to the facts of the disturbances of the cometary path by the attraction of the orbs, nearest which it must have passed, having been often assumed, but never proved—and vice versa that the Comet, which passed so close to Jupiter and to one of the Jovial Satellites, had a nucleus calculated as equal in magnitude to Jupiter itself. The same Comet had an alarming Perihelium to our Moon. And yet neither the Jovial nor the Tellurial Satellite suffered the slightest perturbation. But this is of little comparative weight with me, being conscious that I have not enough mathematico-astronomical science to appreciate rightly the force or weakness of the Objection. I turn therefore to the physical phænomena, and here I cannot hesitate a moment in assigning the preference to your view of the Cauda, as a circumambient atmosphere of prodigious expansion, deriving it's apparent form and direction from it's relative position to the Sun and the solar radiance. But here too it is that I am puzzled—and namely by the following argument. If the vapor be self-luminous, and analogous to electric matter, the solution, in the form above stated at least, will no longer apply. The Solar Rays can in this case be causative of the direction, size and increased Splendor of the Tail &c., by chemical excitement, of which we have no proof or tenable analogy. On the other hand, that the phænomenon does somehow or other depend on the proximity of the Sun is a matter of fact—but if self-luminous, the very contrary ought to be the fact: and this will remain a most weighty objection to the self-luminous hypothesis, till some valid proof shall be given of an evocative action: the solar light not constituting, but exciting and evolving, the varying luminosity of the cometary atmosphere. And on this supposition the apparent position of the Tail must be the real one. If then to avoid this complex difficulty, I deny it's self-luminous nature and adhere to your scheme, I am encountered by another objection—and it is of this that I crave a solution from your sounder and more extended knowledge of these subjects. The reflective power of æriform matter is inversely as the rarity—the rarity on the other hand in a direct ratio to the expansion, and of a continuous increase (i. e. diminution of density) so stupendous that according to the Newtonian Calculus a cubic Inch of Air at the surface of our Earth would at the distance of a thousand miles suffice to fill the whole Area within the orbit of Saturn. Yet what is this to an expansion of 50, nay according to Schroter of more than 100,000,000 of miles, as affirmed of the luminous Tails of certain Comets? How is it conceivable, that a vapor of such rarity (an arithmetical denomination of which would require an x = 0 as the quotient of the density at the end of the first hundred Leagues—so that long before we had reached half-way thro' the Fan-tail we should have in secula seculorum)-—how is it possible, I say, that a vapor of such rarity should reflect light or even perceptibly obey the projectile or the gravitating force?

I cherish, I must confess, a pet system, a bye blow of my own Philosophizing, but it is so unlike to all the opinions and modes of reasoning grounded on the Atoms, Corpuscular and mechanic Philosophy, which is alone tolerated in the present day, and which since the time of Newton has been universally taken as synonimous with Philosophy itself—that I must content myself with caressing the heretical Brat in private under the name of Zoodynamic method—or the doctrine of Life.¹⁸

But the patient wisdom of the experimental philosophy teaches its disciples that investigation is in all cases a sacred duty: and the conviction of this truth actuated the two great masters of this philosophy in a manner most apposite to our argument. Sir Isaac confessed that he had once seriously studied astrology, and Boyle did not conceal that he had formerly been attached to alchemy and natural magic.¹⁹

The immortal Newton, to whom more than to any other human being Europe owes the purification of its general notions concerning the heavenly bodies, studied Astrology with much earnestness, and did not reject it till he had demonstrated the falsehood of all its pretended grounds and principles.²⁰

To invent was different from to discover. A watch-maker invented a time-piece; but a profound thinker only could discover. Sir Isaac Newton, when he thought upon the apple falling from the tree, discovered but did not invent the law of gravitation; others, following this grand idea, carried elementary principles into particles, and elucidated chemistry. Sir Isaac Newton, having once found that a body fell to the centre, knew that all other appearances of nature would receive a consequence, agreeably to the law of cause and effect; for it was a criterion of science, that when causes were determined, effects could be stated with the accuracy of prophecy.²¹

We praise Newton's clearness and steadiness. He was clear and steady, no doubt, while working out, by the help of an admirable geometry, the idea brought forth by another. Newton had his ether and could not rest in—he could not conceive—the idea of a law. He thought it a physical thing after all. As for his chronology, I believe, those who are most competent to judge, rely on it less and less every day. His lucubrations on Daniel and the Revelations seem to me little less than mere raving.²²

In the Hebrew poets each thing has a life of its own, and yet they are all our life. In God they move and live and have their being; not had, as the cold system of Newtonian Theology represents, but have.²³

Robitnsoni, WORKS, IV, 17.²⁴

First: this donation implies, that in the opinion of the donors, the Bible is a plain, easy book …

!! What if I were to call Newton's Principia a plain, easy Book, because certain passages were axiomatic, & because the results were evident to common-sense? What? The Pentateuch? the Solomon's Song! The Prophets in general, & Ezekiel in particular! What? the Ecclesiastes? The praise of Jael'? of Ehud? of David'? What? St. John's Gospel, & his Revelations? the apparent Discordances of the Evangelists in the most important affirmationi, that of the Resurrection? What? St. Paul's Epistles, declared by a contemporary Apostle, dark and hard'? are these parts of a plain & easy Book? …

Robinson, WORKS, IV, 19.

Secondly: the donation of a Bible only, implies, that each reader hath a right of private judgment. This is another just notion, truly scriptural, and entirely protestant. To give a man a book to read, and to deny him the right of judging its meaning, seems the summit of absurdity.

Doubtless!—but may there not be folly in giving a child (and an ignorant man is a child in knowledge) a book, he cannot understand, without any assistance to enable him so to do? To an ignorant man I would not give Newton at all: for not only he cannot understand it, but he may do very well without it. To the same man I would give the Bible, though a very large part would be worse than unintelligible, for it would be misintelligible—yet as it does concern him, I would give it, only with "all the means & appliances to boot," that would preclude a dangerous misinterpretation.

The commercial spirit, and the ascendency of the experimental philosophy which took place at the close of the seventeenth century, though both good and beneficial in their own kinds, combined to foster its corruption. Flattered and dazzled by the real or supposed discoveries which it had made, the more the understanding was enriched, the more did it become debased; till science itself put on a selfish and sensual character, and immediate utility, in exclusive reference to the gratification of the wants and appetites of the animal, the vanities and caprices of the social, and the ambition of the political, man was imposed as the test of all intellectual powers and pursuits. Worth was degraded into a lazy synonyme of value; and the value was exclusively attached to the interest of the senses.²⁵

Notes

⁷ Oct. 8, 1830. Table Talk S, VI, 350-51.

⁸Aids, pp. 393-94. Cf. Shedd, I, 360-61.

⁹ Allsop, Letters, I, 127.

¹⁰ To Southey, Aug. 11, 1801. Griggs, Unp. Letters, I, 180.

¹¹ July 4, 1833. Table Talk S, VI, 469.

¹² To Thomas Poole, March 23, 1801. British Museum, Add. MSS, 35,343, fol. 265 verso-266. Printed in Letters, I, 351-52.

¹³ Coleridge, On the Divine Ideas, pp. 219-21. Printed for the first time by the kind permission of the Huntington Library from HM 8195.

¹⁴ This comment appears in the first edition of Southey's Joan of Arc but is transcribed from British Museum Add. MSS, 28,016, fol. 26 verso-29. Only the last paragraph is in Coleridge's hand; the remainder is in Southey's hand. The note is to Joan of Arc, II, 1. 34: "Their subtle fluids, impacts, essences."

¹⁵ To Ludwig Tieck, July 4, 1817. Griggs, Unp. Letters, II, 201.

¹⁶ Comments printed for the first time from volume in the British Museum, c. 44. g. 4.(1).

¹⁷ Jean Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis D'Argens, Kabbalistische Briefe (8 vols. in 2; Danzig: 1773). British Museum, C. 43. a. 2. Part IV, pp. 114-15. Comment is printed for the first time.

¹⁸ To the editor of Blackwood's, Add. MSS, 34,225, fol. 187.

¹⁹ To the author of "A Letter to Edward Long Fox, M. D.," Athenceum, May 2, 1908, p. 542.

²⁰Statesman's Manual, Appendix C, p. xxiii.

²¹ Lecture VIII of Surrey Institute Lectures, 1812-13. Reported in the Gazette. Printed by Raysor, Shakes. Crit., II, 289.

²² Oct. 8, 1830. Table Talk S, VI, 351.

²³ To W. Sotheby, Sept. 10, 1802. Coleridge, E. H., Letters, I, 406.

²⁴ Robert Robinson, Miscellaneous Works (4 vols.; Harlow: 1807) with Coleridge's notes is in the Huntington Library, which has given me permission to excerpt the two notes here printed for the first time.

²⁵Statesman's Manual, Appendix C, p. xvi.