riere
pensee_; philosophies which could never be in the ascendant in a
sincerely scientific sphere. The two elements had never really mixed.
Writers so different as Locke and Taylor have each his liberal
philosophy, and each has his defence of the orthodox belief; but,
also, each has a divided mind; we wonder how the two elements could
have existed side by side; brought together in a single mind, but
unable to fuse in it, they reveal their radical contrariety. The
Catholic church and humanity are two powers that divide the intellect
and spirit of man. On the Catholic side is faith, rigidly logical as
Ultramontanism, with a proportion of the facts of life, that is, all
that is despairing in life coming naturally under its formula. On the
side of humanity is all that is desirable in the world, all that is
sympathetic with its laws, and succeeds through that sympathy.
Doubtless, for the individual, there are a thousand intermediate
shades of opinion, a thousand resting-places for the religious spirit;
still, [Greek: to diorizein ouk esti ton pollon], fine distinctions
are not for the majority; and this makes time eventually a dogmatist,
working out the opposition in its most trenchant form, and fixing the
horns of the dilemma; until, in the present day, we have on one side
Pius IX, the true descendant of the fisherman, issuing the Encyclical,
pleading the old promise against the world with a special kind of
justice; and on the other side, the irresistible modern culture,
which, as religious men often remind us, is only Christian
accidentally.

The peculiar temper of Coleridge's intellect made the idea of
reconciling this conflict very seductive. With a true speculative
talent he united a false kind of subtlety and the full share of
vanity. A dexterous intellectual _tour de force_ has always an
independent charm; and therefore it is well for the cause of truth
that the directness, sincerity, and naturalness of things are beyond a
certain limit sacrificed in vain to a factitious interest. A method so
forced as that of Coleridge's religious philosophy is from the first
doomed to be insipid, so soon as the temporary interest or taste or
curiosity it was designed to meet has passed away. Then, as to the
manner of such books as the _Aids to Reflection_, or _The
Friend_:--These books came from one whose vocation was in the world of
art; and yet, perhaps, of all books that have been influential in
modern times, they are farthest