A DAMAGED EASTERN SAGE.
CHA.RLES LAMB called Coleridge a slightly damaged archangel It would have been truer had he called him a slightly damaged Guru or Eastern sage and mystic. A Guru is a man who feels within himself the desire to become, and the belief that he can become, conversant with the inner mystery of things,—who can put aside the seemings and shadows of the world, and can gain a knowledge and perception of the oneness of the universe, and so hold communion with God. But to gain that knowledge, and hold that communion, he must as far as may be shake off the trammels of the flesh, and conquer not only desire, but the senses of pleasure and of pain. To give his soul its rights, and to endow him- self with the full heritage of the spirit, he adopts the ascetic life in its severest form. Naked and alone, with little thought for the day, and wholly without thought for the morrow, he wanders or stays still as chance directs, until he has achieved his emancipation. Then, and when "the world is as ashes" to him, and the victory won, he enjoys the sense of a cosmic con- sciousness, and can help others to follow the path which led him to those thrilling heights of thought and feeling.
Those who read the new book of Coleridge's spiritual out- pourings, which is published this week under the title of "Anima Poeta) " (Heinemann), and bear in mind the aim and nature of the Guru, will realise vividly what we mean when we say that Coleridge was in truth a damaged Eastern sage and mystic. The poet's grandson, Mr. Ernest Hartley Coleridge, in his preface puts with rare insight and sympathy, though with a different thought in view, Coleridge's mental attitude. "The invisible pageantry of thought and passion which for ever floated into his spiritual ken, the perpetual hope, the half belief, that the veil of the senses would be rent in twain, and that he and not another would be the first to lay bare the mysteries of being, and to solve the problem of the ages,—of these was the breath of his soul" This is exactly the frame of mind which marks the Guru. Coleridge has expressed this feeling in his own words in many of the passages from his private note-books, out of which "Anima Poete " is compiled. Here is a passage which shows the yearning of his soul to enter upon the inner knowledge and grasp the secret of the universe, and his belief that this yearning was in no sense impossible of fulfilment. "Rest! motion ! 0 ye strange locks of intricate simplicity, who shall find the key? He shall throw wide open the portals of the palace of sensuous or symbolical truth, and the Holy of Holies will be found in the adyta. Rest= enjoy- ment and death. Motion= enjoyment and life. 0 the depth of the proverb, Extremes meet '! I will at least make the attempt to explain to myself the origin of moral evil from the streamy nature of association, which thinking curbs and rudders. Do not the bad passions in dreams throw light and show of proof upon this hypothesis? If I can but explain those passions I shall gain light, I am sure. A clue ! a clue ! a Hecatomb a la Pythagoras, if it tmlabyrinth me." But this is no wayward imagining, no accident or access of poetic fever. All through these most personal and private musings on paper are shot with what, for want of a better
definition, we must call the emotions and aspiration of the Guru. "Good heavens !" he writes, "that there should be anything and not nothing." Again, he is for ever dwelling upon "oneness," upon the mystery that underlies the pro- verb, "Extremes meet," and on the communion with God, which is guaranteed by His omniscience. "That deep intuition of our oneness," he exclaims, and in the next note he draws a passionate comfort from the thought, "Thou knowest.' 0! what a thought. Never to be friendless : never to be unintelligible." Take, too, his outburst, "If my re- searches are shadowy, what in the name of reason are you P or do you resign all pretence to reason, and consider yourself —nay, even that is a contradiction—as a passive 0 among
nothings F" How often, when some Western has interrogated the brooding East, has some such answer and reproof as this been returned. How marked, too, is the Guru element in the
following passages :—
" We might as well attempt to conceive more than three dimen- sions of space, as to imagine more than three kinds of living existence,—God, man, and beast. And even of these the last (division) is obscure, and scarce endures a fixed contemplation without passing into an unripe or degenerated humanity."
"Did you deduce your own being ? Even this is less absurd than the conceit of deducing the Divine Being. Never would you have had the notion, had you not had the idea,—rather, had not the idea worked in you like the memory of a name which we cannot recollect, and yet feel that we have, and which reveals its existence in the mind only by a restless anticipation, and proves its a priori actuality by the almost explosive instantaneity with which it is welcomed and recognised on its re emersion out of the cloud, or its reascent from the horizon of consciousness."
"So far from deeming it, in a religious paint of view, criminal to spread doubts of God, immortality and virtue (that 3-1) in the minds of individuals, I seem to see in it a duty,—lest men by taking the words for granted never attain the feeling or the true faith. They only forbear, that is, even to suspect that the idea is erroneous or the communicators deceivers, but do not believe the idea itself. Whereas to doubt has more of faith, nay even to disbelieve, than that blank negation of all such thoughts and feelings which is the lot of the herd of church-and-meeting- trotters."
How like an Eastern sage, too, was Coleridge's habit of illustra- tion and parable, his love for aphorism and apophthegm, and his apparent belief that words might somehow convey more than the mere meaning which they could be demon- strated to express.
But if it is easy to show that Coleridge had in reality the mind of a Guru, it is alas no less easy to show that he was a ruined,—a more than slightly damaged, Eastern sage. The long distraction and disorder of his life proves that. His life was not that of a Guru, but of a man tormented by the world, and though not in the most fleshly sense ruined by the flesh. Whether in reality he might have attained to the secret to which he believed he had come so near, we dare not pre- sume to say. But at least it is clear that he would have done better had he absented himself from the earthly felicities of hearth and home—felicities for which he was so designed—and from the clash of the world, and had tried to lead the life of the Eastern sage. Had he learned to sub- due the passions, and desires, and affections, how much more calmly and clearly would he have seen and reasoned. His misfortunes, both as a man and sage, seem indeed to point to the truth that there are still uses for the ascetic mode of life. But though we may hold that Coleridge, and those formed like him, would be better were they deliberately to free themselves from the trammels of the world, we by no means hold that the ascetic life—the life that is of positive and direct asceticism—can ever be in the truest sense the higher life. He may do well who gives his soul full play by the methods of the Guru, but he does better who lives in the world and shares its burdens and its cares,—who belongs to that band whose one bond is that all have been "unspotted from the world," who lives the common life, and yet keeps his eyes undimmed. To live the higher life in the world, not the ascetic life outside it, is the ideal. And was not this after all the lesson taught in Syria nigh two thousand years ago P Christ was not a Guru, and did not live among the Essenes; but ate and drank as other men, and lived the life of a Galilean. Coleridge was, no doubt, a damaged Guru ; and might have been an undamaged one had he lived the life of the Guru ; but though we say this, let no one suppose that we put forward the Eastern sage and mystic as the ideal of spiritual life.
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