The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

This famous book, of which the full title is "Aids to Reflection in the Formation of a Manly Character on the several Grounds of Prudence, Morality, and Religion," was published in 1825, nine years before the author's death. Its influence on thoughtful minds was very great, and many of the first divines of that period owed to it their profoundest religious ideas. It has been said that the fame of Coleridge (see LIVES AND LETTERS) as a philosophic thinker is not so great as it was during the twenty years immediately after his death; but one imagines that this statement merely means that not so many people now read Coleridge as did fifty years ago. The book, at any rate, has not yet been written which exposes a fallacy in his argument or demolishes his system. It should be remembered that this poet and searching thinker, to whom men like Wordsworth and Haslitt listened with reverence, was for some time in his life a Unitarian, and won to faith in the divinity of Christ by the use of his reason.

I.--Introductory Aphorisms

It is the most useful prerogative of genius to rescue truths from the neglect caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission. Truths, of all others the most awful and interesting, are too often considered as so true that they lose the power of truth, and lie bedridden in the dormitory of the soul.

There is one sure way of giving freshness and importance to the most commonplace maxims--that of reflecting on them in direct reference to our own state and conduct, to our own past and future being. A reflecting mind, says an ancient writer, is the spring and source of every good thing. As a man without forethought scarce deserves the name of man, so forethought without reflection is but a metaphorical phrase for the instinct of a beast.

In order to learn, we must attend; in order to profitby what we have learnt, we must think; he only thinks who reflects.

To assign a feeling and a determination of their will as a satisfactory reason for embracing or rejecting an opinion is the habit of many educated people; to me, this seems little less irrational than to apply the nose to a picture, and to decide on its genuineness by the sense of smell.

In attention we keep the mind passive; in thought we rouse it into activity.

An hour of solitude passed in sincere and earnest prayer, or the conflict with and conquest over a single passion or "subtle bosom sin," will teach us more of thought, will more effectually awaken the faculty, and form the habit of reflection, than will a year's study in the schools without them.

Never yet did there exist a full faith in the Divine Word which did not expand the intellect, while it purified the heart; which did not multiply the aims and objects of the understanding, while it fixed and simplified those of the desires and passions. "Give me understanding," says David, "and I shall observe Thy laws with my whole heart."