Aids to Reflection Quotes

“It is a dull and obtuse mind, that must divide in order to distinguish; but it is a still worse that distinguishes in order to divide.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection

“This is a deep meditation, though the position is capable of the strictest proof,—namely, that there can be no I without a Thou, and that a Thou is only possible by an equation in which I is taken as equal to Thou, and yet not the same. And this, again, is only possible by putting them in opposition as correspondent opposites, or correlatives. In order to this, a something must be affirmed in the one, which is rejected in the other, and this something is the will. I do not will to consider myself as equal to myself, for in the very act of constructing myself I, I take it as the same, and therefore as incapable of comparison, that is, of any application of the will. If then, I minus the will be the thesis; Thou plus will must be the antithesis, but the equation of Thou with I, by means of a free act, negativing the sameness in order to establish the equality, is the true definition of conscience. But as without a Thou there can be no You, so without a You no They, These, or Those; and as all these conjointly form the materials and subjects of consciousness, and the conditions of experience, it is evident that conscience is the root of all consciousness,—à fortiori, the precondition of all experience,—and that the conscience cannot have been in its first revelation deduced from experience.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection