We come now to another epoch in the life of the poet—Shelley at Oxford:—
He was matriculated, and went to University ![]()
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College at
the commencement of Michaelmas term, at the end of October 1810. The choice of this college
(though a respectable one, by no means of high repute) was made by his father for two
reasons—first, that he had himself, as already mentioned, been a member of
it,—and secondly, because it numbered among its benefactors some of his ancestors,
one of whom had founded an Exhibition. I had left the university before he entered it, and
only saw him once in passing through the city. “His rooms were in the corner next
to the hall of the principal quadrangle, on the first floor, and on the right of the
entrance, but by reason of the turn in the stairs, when you reach them, they will be on
the right hand. It is a spot, which I might venture to predict many of our posterity
will hereafter reverently visit, and reflect an honour on that college, which has
nothing so great to distinguish it.” The portrait of him drawn by his
friend, from whom I have borrowed largely,
corresponded with my recollection of him at this interview. “His
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figure was slight and fragile, and yet his bones and joints were
large and strong. He was tall, but he stooped so much, that he seemed of low
stature.”
De Quincey says, that he
remembers “seeing in London, a little Indian ink sketch of him in his academical
costume of Oxford. The sketch tallying pretty well with a verbal description which he
had heard of him in some company, viz., that he looked like an elegant and slender
flower whose head drooped from being surcharged with rain.” Where is this
sketch? How valuable would it be! “His clothes,” Mr.
H. adds, “were expensive, and according to the most approved mode
of the day, but they were tumbled, rumpled, unbrushed. His gestures were abrupt,
sometimes violent, occasionally even awkward, yet more frequently gentle and graceful.
His complexion was delicate, and almost feminine, of the purest red and white, yet he
was tanned and freckled by exposure to the sun, having past the autumn, as he said, in
shooting;” and he said rightly, for he had, during September, often
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carried a gun in his father’s preserves;
Sir Timothy being a keen sportsman, and
Shelley himself an excellent shot, for I well remember one
day in the winter of 1809, when we were out together, his killing at three successive
shots, three snipes, to my great astonishment and envy, at the tail of the pond in front of
Field-place. “His features, his whole face, and his head, were particularly small,
yet the last appeared of a remarkable bulk, for his hair was long and bushy, and in
fits of absence, and in the agonies (if I may use the word) of anxious thought, he
often rubbed it fiercely with his hands, or passed his fingers swiftly through his
locks, unconsciously, so that it was singularly rough and wild—a particularity
which he had at school. His features were not symmetrical, the mouth perhaps excepted,
yet was the effect of the whole extremely powerful. They breathed an animation—a
fire—an enthusiasm—a vivid and preternatural intelligence, that I never met
with in any other countenance. Nor was the moral expression less beautiful than the
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intellectual, for there was a softness and delicacy, a gentleness,
and especially (though this will surprise many) an air of profound veneration, that
characterises the best works, and chiefly the frescoes (and into these they infused
their whole souls) of the great masters of Rome and Florence.”
“I observed, too, the same contradiction in his rooms, which I had
often remarked in his person and dress. The carpet, curtain, and furniture were quite
new, and had not passed through several generations of students on the payment of the
thirds, that is, the third price last given. This general air of freshness was greatly
obscured by the indescribable confusion in which the various objects were mixed.
Scarcely a single article was in its right place—books, boots, papers, shoes,
philosophical instruments, clothes, pistols, linen, crockery, ammunition, and phials
innumerable, with money, stockings, prints, crucibles, bags, and boxes, were scattered
on the floor in every place, as if the young chemist, in order to analyze the mystery
of creation, had endeavoured ![]()
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first to reconstruct the primæval
chaos. The tables, and especially the carpet, were already stained with large spots of
various hues, which frequently proclaimed the agency of fire. An electrical machine, an
air pump, the galvanic trough, a solar microscope, and large glass jars and receivers,
were conspicuous amidst the mass of matter. Upon the table by his side, were some books
lying open, a bundle of new pens, and a bottle of japan ink, with many chips, and a
handsome razor, that had been used as a knife. There were bottles of soda-water, sugar,
pieces of lemon, and the traces of an effervescent beverage.”
Such, with some variations, was, as they come back on me, the appearance of
Shelley and his rooms during this visit to him
in the November of 1810.
He had not forgotten our Walker’s Lectures, and was deep in the mysteries of chemistry, and
had apparently been making some experiments; but it is highly improbable that Shelley was ![]()
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qualified to succeed in
that science, where scrupulous minuteness and a mechanical accuracy are indispensable. His
chemical operations seemed to an unskilful observer to premise nothing but disasters. He
had blown himself up at Eton. He had inadvertently swallowed some mineral poison, which he
declared had seriously injured his health, and from the effects of which he should never
recover. His hands, his clothes, his books, and his furniture were stained and covered by
medical acids—more than one hole in the carpet could elucidate the ultimate phenomena
of combustion, especially in the middle of the room, where the floor had also been burnt by
his mixing ether with some other fluid in a crucible, and the honourable wound was speedily
enlarged by rents, for the philosopher, as he hastily crossed the room in pursuit of truth,
was frequently caught in it by the foot.
And speaking of electricity and chemistry, Mr.
Hogg says, “I know little of the physical sciences, and felt
therefore but a slight degree of interest ![]()
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in them. I looked upon
his philosophical apparatus as toys and playthings, like a chess board. Through want of
sympathy, his zeal, which was at first ardent, gradually cooled, and he applied himself
to those pursuits, after a time less frequently, and with less earnestness.”
“The true value of these,” Mr. H. adds,
“was often the subject of animated discussion; and I remember one evening at
my rooms, when he had sought refuge from the extreme cold in the little apartment or
study, I referred, in the course of our debate, to a passage in
Zenophon’s Memorabilia, where
Socrates speaks in dispraise of physics.” But that
Shelley, instead of disparaging, was almost inclined to
overrate them, is proved by the great interest he took in 1820, in
Mr. Reevely’s steam-boat, and the active assistance
he afforded him in completing the engine; and his imagination seems to have fallen back in
his old pursuits, with the delight of a boy, where he says, (he had been visiting the
laboratory of the young engineer):—
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Magical forms the brick floor overspread,
Proteus transformed to metal, did not make
More figures and more strange, nor did he take
Such shapes of unintelligible brass,
Or heaped himself in such a horrid mass
Of tin and iron, not to be understood,
And forms of unimaginable wood,
To puzzle Tubal Cain, and all his brood;
Great screws, and cones, and wheels of grooved blocks,
The elements of what will stand the shocks
Of war, and wind, and time; upon the table
More knacks and quips there be, than I am able
To catalogue in this verse of mine—
A pretty bowl of wood—not full of wine,
But quicksilver—that dew, which the gnomes drink—
When at their subterranean toil they swink,
Pledging the dæmons of the earthquake, who
Reply to them in lava-cry, “Halloo!”
And call out to the cities o’er their head—
Roofs, towns, and shrines—the dying and the dead
Crash thro’ the chinks of earth—and then all quaff
Another rouse, and hold their sides, and laugh.
This quicksilver no gnome has drunk—within
The walnut bowl it lies, veined and thin,
In colour like the wake of light that stains
The Tuscan deep, when from the moist moon rains
The inmost shower of its white fire—the breeze
Is still—blue Heaven smiles over the pale seas—
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And in this bowl of quicksilver—for I
Yield to the impulse of an infancy
Outlasting manhood—I have made to float
The idealism of a paper boat,
A hollow screw with cogs.
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On reading these beautifully imaginative lines, who will say with Wordsworth, that there is no poetry in a steam engine?
But “the Wierd Archimage,” as Shelley calls himself, was right in abandoning chemistry. I doubt, with
Mr. Hogg, whether he would ever have made a
natural philosopher. As a boy he was fond of flying kites, and at Field Place, made an
electrical one, an idea borrowed from Franklin, in
order to draw lightning from the clouds—fire from Heaven, like a new Prometheus. But its phenomena did not alone excite his
interest. He thought “what a mighty instrument electricity might be in the hands
of him who knew bow to wield it, and in what manner to direct its omnipotent energies;
what a terrible organ would the supernal shock prove, if we were able to guide it; how
many of the secrets of nature ![]()
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could not such a stupendous force
unlock!” “The galvanic battery,” said
Shelley, “is a new engine. It has been used hitherto to
an insignificant extent, yet it has worked wonders already. What will not an
extraordinary combination of troughs of colossal magnitude—a well arranged system
of hundreds of metallic plates, effect? Shelley also speculated on
the uses of chemistry as applied to agriculture, in transmuting an unfruitful region
into a land of exuberant plenty; on generating from the atmospheric air, water in every
situation, and in every quantity; and of the power of providing heat at
will,”—adding, “what a comfort it would be to the poor at all
times, and especially in the winter, if we could be masters of caloric, and could at
will furnish them with a constant supply!”
“With such fervour,” adds Mr.
H., “did the slender and beardless boy speculate concerning the
march of physical science; his speculations were as wild as the experience of twenty
years had shown them to be, but the zealous earnest-![]()
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ness for the
augmentation of knowledge, and the glowing philanthropy and boundless benevolence that
marked them, are without parallel.”
We had been more frequent correspondents than ever, since he became an
Oxonian, and our friendly controversies were carried on with greater animation. But at this
period of time the tenor, though not the nature, of them has entirely escaped me, and as I
can draw from a most authentic source his metaphysical speculations, I shall make use of
these materials in another place when I come to treat of them.
Mr. Hogg says that “Shelley knew nothing of German, but from the
glimmering light of translation;” there I think he is mistaken, for on the
occasion of this visit he showed me a volume of tales which he had himself rendered from
the original. During half an hour that we were together, (I passed the whole day with him)
I perused these MSS., and they gave me a very low idea of the literature of that country,
then almost unknown in England. It was evident ![]()
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that the books that had
fallen into his hands were from the pens of very inferior writers; and I told him he had
lost his time and labour in clothing them in his own language, and that I thought he could
write much better things himself. He showed and read to me many letters he had received in
controversies he had originated with learned divines; among the rest with a bishop, under
the assumed name of a woman. “He had commenced this practice at Eton, and when he
came to Oxford he retained and extended the former practice, keeping up the ball of
doubt in letters, and of those he received many, so that the arrival of the postman was
always an anxious moment to him. This practice he had learnt of a physician, from whom
he had taken instructions in chemistry, and of whose character and talents he often
spoke with profound veneration. It was indeed the usual course with men of learning, as
their biographers and many volumes of such epistles testify. The physician was an old
man, and a man of the old
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school; he confined his epistolary
discussions to matters of science, and so did his disciple for a long time; but when
metaphysics usurped the place in his affections, that chemistry had before had, the
latter fell into discerptations respecting existences still more subtle than gasses and
the electric fluid. The transition, however, from physics to metaphysics was gradual.
Is the electric fluid material? he would ask his correspondent. Is light? Is the vital
principle in vegetables?—in the human soul? His individual character had proved
an obstacle to his inquiries, even whilst they were strictly physical. A refuted or
irritated chemist had suddenly concluded a long correspondence by telling his youthful
opponent that he would write to his master and have him flogged. The discipline of a
public school, however salutary in other respects, was not favourable to free and fair
discussion, and hence Shelley began to address his enquiries
anonymously, or rather that he might receive an answer as
Philalethes and the like; but even at
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Eton the postman did not understand Greek, and to prevent miscarriages, therefore, it
was necessary to adopt a more familiar name, as John Short or
Thomas Long.
“In briefly describing the nature of Shelley’s epistolary contentions, the impression that they were
conducted on his part, or considered by him with frivolity, or any unseemly levity,
would be most erroneous; his whole frame of mind was grave, earnest, and anxious, and
his deportment was reverential, with an edification reaching beyond his age, an age
wanting in reverence—an unlearned age—a young age for the lack-learning.
Hume permits no object of respect to
remain—Locke approaches the most awful
speculations with the same indifference as if he were about to handle the properties of
triangles; the small deference rendered to the most holy things by the able theologian
Paley, is not the least remarkable of his
characteristics. Wiser and better men displayed anciently, together with a more
profound erudition, a superior and touching so-![]()
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lemnity; the meek
seriousness of Shelley was redolent of those good old times,
before mankind had been despoiled of a main ingredient in the composition of happiness,
a well directed veneration.
“Whether such disputations were decorous or profitable, may be
perhaps doubtful; there can be no doubt, however, since the sweet gentleness of
Shelley was easily and instantly swayed by
the mild influences of friendly admonition, that had even the least dignified of his
elders suggested the propriety of his pursuing his metaphysical inquiries with less
ardour, his obedience would have been prompt and perfect.” It is to be
lamented that all his letters written at this time should have perished, as they would
throw light on the speculations of his active and inquiring mind.
Shelley was an indefatigable student, frequently
devoting to his books ten or twelve hours of the day, and part of the night. The absorption
of his ideas by reading, was become in him ![]()
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a curious phenomenon. He
took in seven or eight lines at a glance, and his mind seized the sense with a velocity
equal to the twinkling of an eye. Often would a single word enable him at once to
comprehend the meaning of the sentence. His memory was prodigious. He with the same
fidelity assimilated, to use a medical term for digestion, the ideas acquired by reading
and those which he derived from reflection or conversation. In short, he possessed the
memory of places, words, things, and figures. Not only did he call up objects at will, but
he revived them in the mind, in the same situations, and with the lights and colours in
which they had appeared to him at particular moments. He collected not only the gist of the
thoughts in the book wherefrom they were taken, but even the disposition of his soul at the
time. Thus, by an unheard-of faculty and privilege, he could retrace the progress and the
whole course of his imagination from the most anciently sketched idea, down to its last
development. His brain, habituated from earliest
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youth to the
complicated mechanism of human forces, drew from its rich structure a crowd of admirable
images, full of reality and freshness, with which it was continually nurtured. He could
throw a veil over his eyes, and find himself in a
camera obscura,
where all the features of a scene were reproduced in a form more pure and perfect than they
had been originally presented to his external senses.
“As his love of intellectual pursuits was vehement, and the vigour
of his genius almost celestial, so were the purity and sanctity of his life most
conspicuous. His food was plain and simple as that of a hermit, with a certain
anticipation at this time of a vegetable diet, respecting which he afterwards became an
enthusiast in theory, and in practice an irregular votary. With his usual fondness for
moving the abstruse and difficult questions of the highest theology, he loved to
inquire, whether man can justify, on the ground of reason alone, the practice of taking
the life of inferior animals, except in the necessary de-![]()
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fence of
his life, and of his means of life, the fruits of that field which he had tilled, from
violence and spoliation. Not only have considerable sects, he said, denied the right
altogether; but those among the tender-hearted and imaginative people of antiquity, who
accounted it lawful to kill and eat, appear to have doubted whether they might take
away life solely for the use of man alone. They slew their cattle, not simply for human
gusto, like the less scrupulous butchers of modern times, but only as a sacrifice for
the honour and in the name of the Deity, or rather of those subordinate divinities, to
whom as they believed the Supreme Being had assigned the creation and conservation of
the visible material world; as an incitement to these pious offerings, they partook of
the residue of the victims, of which, without such sanction and sanctification, they
would not have presumed to taste. So reverent was the caution of a humane and prudent
antiquity. Bread became his chief sustenance; when his regimen attained an austerity
that afterwards
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distinguished it, he could have lived on bread
alone, without repining. When he was walking in London, he would suddenly turn into a
baker’s shop, purchase a supply, and breaking a loaf, he would offer it to his
companion. ‘Do you know,’ he said to me one day with some surprise,
‘that such a one does not like bread? Did you ever know a person who
disliked bread?’ And he told me that a friend had refused such an offer.
I explained to him that the individual in question probably had no objection to bread
in a moderate quantity, and with the usual adjuncts, and was only unwilling to devour
two or three pounds of dry bread in the street, and at an early hour.
Shelley had no such scruples—his pockets were
generally well stored with bread. A circle upon the carpet clearly defined by an ample
verge of crumbs, often marked the place where he had long sat at his studies—his
face nearly in contact with the book. He was near-sighted.”
Shelley frequently exercised his ingenuity in long
discussions respecting various questions in ![]()
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logic, and more frequently
indulged in metaphysical inquiries.
Mr. H. and
himself read several metaphysical works together in whole or in part, for the first time,
and after a previous perusal by one or both of them. The examination of a chapter of
“
Locke’s Essay on the Human Understanding,” would induce
him at any moment to quit every other pursuit. They read together
Hume’s Essays, and some productions of the Scotch metaphysicians of inferior ability,
all with assiduous and friendly altercations, and the latter writers at least with small
profit, unless some sparks of knowledge were struck out in the collision of debate. They
read also certain popular French works, that treat of man for the most part in a mixed
method, metaphysically, morally and politically. “We must bear in mind, however,
that he was an eager, bold, and unwearied disputant, and although the position in which
the sceptic and materialist love to entrench themselves, offer no picturesque
attractions to the eye of the poet, it is well adapted
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to
defensive warfare, and it is not easy for an ordinary enemy to dislodge him who
occupies a post that derives strength from the weakness of the assailant. It has been
insinuated that whenever a man of real talent and generous feelings condescends to
fight under these colours, he is guilty of a dissimulation which he deems harmless,
perhaps even praiseworthy, for the sake of victory in argument. It is not a little
curious to observe one whose sanguine temper led him to believe implicitly every
assertion, so that it was impossible and incredible, exulting in his philosophical
doubts, when, the calmest and most suspicious of analists, he refused to admit, without
strict proof, propositions, that many who are not deficient in metaphysical prudence
account obvious and self-evident. The sceptical philosophy had another charm, it
partook of the new and wonderful, inasmuch as it called into doubt, and seemed to place
in jeopardy, during the joyous hours of disputation, many important practical
conclusions. To a soul loving excitement and change, destruction,
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so it be on a large scale, may sometimes prove hardly less inspiring than creation. The
fact of the magician, who by the touch of his rod, could cause the great Pyramid to
dissolve into the air, and to vanish from the sight, would be as surprising as the
achievement of him, who by the same rod, could instantly raise a similar mass in any
chosen spot. If the destruction of the eternal monument was only apparent, the ocular
sophism would be at once harmless and ingenious; so was it with the logomachy of the
young and strenuous logician, and his intellectual activity merited praise and reward.
There was another reason, moreover, why the sceptical philosophy should be welcome to
Shelley,—at that time he was young, and it is generally
acceptable to youth. It is adopted as the abiding rule of reason, throughout life, by
those who are distinguished by a sterility of soul, a barrenness of invention, a total
dearth of fancy, and a scanty stock of learning. Such, in truth, although the warmth of
feverish blood, the light burthen of a few years,
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and the
precipitation of experience, may sometimes seem to contradict the assertion, is the
state of mind at the commencement of manhood, when the vessel has, as yet, received but
a small portion of the cargo of the accumulated wisdom of past ages; when the amount of
mental operations that have actually been performed is small, and the materials upon
which the imagination can work are insignificant; consequently, the inventions of the
young are crude and frigid. Hence the most fertile mind exactly resembles in early
youth, the hopeless barrenness of those, who have grown old in vain, as to its actual
condition, and it differs only in the unseen capacity for future production. The
philosopher who declares that he knows nothing, and that nothing can be known, will
readily find followers among the young, for they are sensible that they possess the
requisite qualification for entering the school, and are as far advanced in the science
of ignorance as their master. A stranger who had chanced to have been present at some
of Shelley’s disputes, or who
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knew him
only from having read some of the short argumentative essays which he composed as
voluntary exercises, would have said, ‘Surely the soul of
Hume passed by transmigration into the body of that eloquent
young man, or rather he represents one of the enthusiastic and animated materialists of
the French school, whom revolutionary violence lately intercepted at an early age in
his philosophical career.’
“There were times, however, when a visitor who had listened to the
glowing discourses delivered with a more intense ardour, would have hailed a young
Platonist breathing forth the ideal philosophy, and in his pursuit of the intellectual
world, entirely overlooking the material, or noticing it only to contemn it. The tall
boy, who is permitted, for the first time, to scare the partridges with his fowling
piece, scorns to handle the top or the hoop of his younger brother; thus the man, whose
years and studies are mature, slights the feeble aspirations after the higher
departments of knowledge that were ![]()
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deemed so important during his
residence at college. It seems laughable, but it is true, his knowledge of
Plato was derived solely from
Dacier’s translation of a few of the Dialogues, and from an
English version of that French translation. Since that time, however, few of his
countrymen have read the golden works of that majestic philosopher in the original
language, more frequently, and more carefully; and few, if any, with more profit than
Shelley. Although the source whence flowed
his earliest taste of the divine philosophy was scanty and turbid, the draught was not
the less grateful to his lips. Shelley was never tired of reading
passages from the dialogues contained in this collection, especially from the
Phædo, and he was vehemently excited by the striking
doctrines which
Socrates unfolds, especially by
that which teaches, that all our knowledge consists of reminiscences of what we had
learnt in a former existence. He often even paced about his room, slowly shook his wild
locks, and discoursed in a solemn tone with a
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mysterious air,
speculating concerning our previous condition, and of the nature of our life and
occupations in the world, where, according to Plato, we had
attained to erudition, and had advanced ourselves in knowledge, so that the most
studious and the most inventive, in other words, those who have the best memory, are
able to call back a part only, and with much pain, and extreme difficulty, of what was
familiar to us.”
This doctrine, introduced by Pythagoras, after his travels in India, and derived from the Gymnosophists, was
received almost without question by several of the philosophers of Greece; and long before
Shelley went to Oxford, had taken deep root in
his mind, for he had found it in Coleridge and
introduced it into the Wandering Jew.
That Shelley should have been delighted in finding it unfolded in the
Phædo, I can easily believe. It was a
doctrine that vindicated the justice of the Gods; for, by it, the inequalities of
conditions, the comparative misery and happiness of individuals, were reconciled to the
mind, ![]()
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such individuals being rewarded or punished in this life for
good or evil deeds committed in a former state of existence. The objection, that we have no
memory of that state, is answered by the question, “Does a child of two years old
remember what passed when he was a year old?” But it is
Shelley’s opinion that it is permitted to some gifted
persons to have glimpses of the past, and he thus records it:
“I have beheld scenes, with the intimate and unaccountable
connection of which with the obscure parts of my own nature, I have been irresistibly
impressed. I have beheld a scene that has produced no unusual effect on my thoughts.
After a lapse of many years I have dreamed of this scene. It has hung on my memory, it
has haunted my thoughts at intervals with the pertinacity of an object connected with
human affections. I have visited this scene again. Neither the dream could be
dissociated from the landscape, nor the landscape from the dream, nor feelings such as
neither singly could have ![]()
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awakened from both. But the most
remarkable event of this nature which ever occurred to me, happened at Oxford. I was
walking with a friend in the neighbourhood of that city, engaged in earnest and
interesting conversation; we suddenly turned a corner of a lane, and the view, which
its high banks and hedges had concealed, presented itself. The view consisted of a
windmill, standing in one among many pleasing meadows, inclosed with stone walls. The
irregular and broken ground between the wall and the road in which we stood, a long low
hill behind the windmill, and a grey covering of uniform cloud spread over the evening
sky. It was that season when the last leaf had just fallen from the scant and stunted
ash. The scene surely was a common one, the season and the hour little calculated to
kindle lawless thought. It was a tame and uninteresting assemblage of objects, such as
would drive the imagination for refuge in serious and sober talk to the evening
fireside and the dessert of winter fruits and wine. The effect
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which it produced on me was not such as could be expected. I suddenly remembered to
have seen the exact scene in some dream of long.—Here I was obliged to leave off,
overcome with thrilling horror.”
Mrs.
Shelley appends to this passage the following remark: “This
fragment was written in 1815. I remember well his coming to me from writing it, pale
and agitated, to seek refuge in conversation from the fearful emotions it
excited.” “No man,” she adds, “had such keen
sensations as
Shelley. His nervous temperament
was wound up by the delicacy of his health to an intense degree of sensibility; and
while his active mind pondered for ever upon, and drew conclusions from his sensations,
his reveries increased their vivacity, till they mingled with and were one with
thought, and both became absorbing and tumultuous, even to physical pain.”
Balzac relates of Louis
Lambert a similar phenomenon to the above:—“Whilst at school
at Blois, during a holiday, we were allowed to go to ![]()
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the chateau
of Rochambeau. As soon as we reached the hill, whence we could behold the chateau, and
the tortuous valley where the river wound through meadows of graceful slope,—one
of those admirable landscapes on which the lively sensations of boyhood, or those of
love have impressed such a charm that we can never venture to look on them a second
time,—Louis Lambert said to
me,—‘I have seen all this last night in dream.’ He recognised the
grove of trees under which we were, and the disposition of the foliage, the colour of
the water, the turrets of the chateau, the lights and shades, the distances, in fine
all the details of the spot which we had then perceived for the first time.”
After some interesting conversation, which would occupy too much space here,
Balzac makes Louis Lambert
say,—“‘If the landscape did not come to me, which it is absurd to
think, then must I have come to it. If I were here whilst I slept, does not this fact
constitute a complete separation between my body and inward being? Does it not form a
locomotive
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faculty in the soul, or effects that are equivalent to
locomotive? Thus, if the disunion of our two natures could take place during sleep, why
could they not equally discover themselves when awake?’ ‘Is there not an
entire science in this phenomenon,’ added he, striking his forehead. ‘If it
be not the principle of a science, it certainly betrays a singular faculty in
man.’”
