He has found in what he calls science an endless source of diversion, he betrays himself everywhere as a man of intense intellectual curiosity in every direction, and yet withal so little concerned with the roots of things, so easily satisfied with a little plausible coherence in a theory, as not to have found truth an apparently stern or exacting mistress, not to have felt the anguish of any deep mental conflict.

The scene was written in 1800 when Goethe had become a little cynical with respect to the artistic coherence of Faust and looked on it as a "monstrosity."

Yet such were the boons granted to Abraham, as the reward of faith and obedience to the One true God,the vital principle without which religion dies into superstition, with which his descendants were inspired not only to nationality and civil coherence, but to the highest and noblest teachings the world has received from any people, and by which his name is forever linked with the spiritual progress and happiness of mankind.

Admirers of the Roman style call it cold, indefinite, wanting in dogmatic coherence, comprehensiveness, and grandeur.

Whence this afflicting departure from logical coherence in history?

He has found in what he calls science an endless source of diversion, he betrays himself everywhere as a man of intense intellectual curiosity in every direction, and yet withal so little concerned with the roots of things, so easily satisfied with a little plausible coherence in a theory, as not to have found truth an apparently stern or exacting mistress, not to have felt the anguish of any deep mental conflict.

The great salient points are admirably seized; all rounds itself off, into a kind of rhythmic coherence; it is, as Schlegel says, epic;as indeed all delineation by a great thinker will be.

Nor is the subtile and irresistible coherence in successions of clear sunny melody, in which Mozart so abounds, in any great degree understood, even by some who call themselves artists.

From the few who, like Bakunin, Brousse, and Krapotkin, have written about the "propaganda of action" with sufficient coherence to make themselves understood, it appears that it is not their hope to destroy government by removing all executive heads,even their tortured brains recognize the impossibility of that task; nor do they hope to so far terrify rulers as to bring about their abdication.

But the archaisms, the "unpoetical" diction, and especially the disregard of tense coherence in the poem as we now have it, contribute greatly to the atmosphere of romanceas of a story removed alike from the commonplace experience of every day and from familiar literary conventionswhich it was Coleridge's intention to produce.

This "faith" in the ultimate coherence and unity of everything is the presupposition and motive of the very attempt to philosophize or to determine the nature of that unity.

If, then, this absolute coherence be insisted on, this test condemns our whole knowledge; if not, it remains formal, and fails to recognize any distinctions of value in the claims which can be systematized.

There can, I think, be no such division respecting that which is perfectly pure and indivisible in its essence; and, I would ask, is not simple continuity apt to exclude it from our conception of every thing which appears with uniform coherence?