To set up for a statesman upon historical knowledge only, is as
about as wise as to set up for a musician by the purchase of some score
flutes, fiddles, and horns. In order to make music, you must know how to
play; in order to make your facts speak truth, you must know what the truth
is which _ought_ to be proved,--the ideal truth,--the truth which was
consciously or unconsciously, strongly or weakly, wisely or blindly,
intended at all times.[1]
[Footnote 1:
I have preserved this passage, conscious, the while, how liable it is to be
misunderstood, or at least not understood. The readers of Mr. Coleridge's
works generally, or of his "Church and State" in particular, will have no
difficulty in entering into his meaning; namely, that no investigation in
the non-mathematical sciences can be carried on in a way deserving to be
called philosophical, unless the investigator have in himself a mental
initiative, or, what comes to the same thing, unless he set out with an
intuition of the ultimate aim or idea of the science or aggregation of
facts to be explained or interpreted. The analysis of the Platonic and
Baconian methods in "The Friend," to which I have before referred, and the
"Church and State," exhibit respectively a splendid vindication and example
of Mr.
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