the constructive or dynamic philosophy, as opposed to the merely mechanic.' Coleridge's vagueness of language leaves it uncertain to what part of the work he is here referring; but it seems not unlikely that the passage which he elaborated, but did not insert, was the missing portion of the chapter 'On the imagination, or esemplastic power'.

In the opening page of the work itself, Coleridge anticipates the charge of a personal motive in writing. The narration' (he writes) 'has been used chiefly for the purpose of giving continuity to the work, in part for the reflections suggested to me by particular events: but still more as introductory to a statement of my principles in Politics, Religion, and Philosophy, and the application of the rules, deduced from philosophical principles, to poetry and criticism.' But it cannot be said that the narrative portion of the book, detached and fragmentary as it is, really fulfils this introductory purpose, or relieves the student from the task of reconstructing, from this and other sources, the gradual development of Coleridge's opinions to the point which they had now attained. Indeed, as Coleridge admits, the very narrative itself was made to serve three distinct ends, each of which was an obstacle to the fulfilment of the other two.

But enough has been said of the miscellaneous character of the Biographia Literaria. It remains to consider what definite contribution to Coleridge's theory of the imagination it actually contains. Unfortunately, it is not easy in a work of this kind, to distinguish the record of opinions arrived at in the past from the statement of those now first clearly adopted. Indeed, our knowledge of Coleridge's earlier views is partly based upon this very book, although happily we have other sources of corroboration. The development of these views may here be briefly recapitulated.

In tracing the origin of the theory in Coleridge's mind, we saw how his early doubts as to the validity of the mechanical explanation of knowledge, if they did not originate in, were yet confirmed by, the testimony of the imagination in its poetic function. Its power to reveal a new aspect of things, and compel our faith in its revelation, naturally, suggested a new attitude to the problem of knowledge. For although on the one hand the mind in its poetic interpretation of outward forms is limited and determined by the nature of those forms, yet it is equally free and creative in respect of them, in so far as it invests them with a being and a life which as mere objects of the senses they do not possess. Moreover, the basis of this activity being the desire for self-expression (not of the individual merely, but of the universal self), the fitness of the external world to be the vehicle of such expression pointed to its participation in a common reality with the self which it reflected. But the fact that the imagination is a restricted gift rendered it impossible to regard it as universally active in the process of knowledge.

At this point Coleridge became acquainted with Kant's works and found in his account of the mind a definite place assigned to the imagination as an indispensable factor in the attainment of knowledge. For since the understanding, as a purely intellectual faculty, was incapable of reaching the manifold of sense, it was necessary to call in the services of the imagination, which in virtue of its twofold nature presents that manifold in a form suitable for its subsumption under the categories. The imagination as thus operative is not a mere faculty of images: still less is it the faculty of poetic invention: its peculiar characteristic lies in the power of figurative synthesis, or of delineating the forms of things in general. Moreover, in performing this function it is subject to the laws of the understanding its procedure, therefore, contributes nothing to our

knowledge of the origin of phenomena. But for this very reason of its conformity to the understanding, its deliverances are objective, that is, valid for all thinking beings: and are in this respect to be distinguished from the creations of its reproductive activity, which as subject to empirical conditions (the laws of association) have merely individual and contingent validity. Finally, in the aesthetic judgement, the imagination, though still receiving its law from the understanding, is yet so far free, that its activity is determined not by the necessity of a particular cognition, but by its own character as an organ of knowledge in general.

Kant thus distinguishes three functions or activities of the imagination as reproductive, in which it is subject to empirical conditions; as productive, in which it acts spontaneously and determines phenomena instead of being determined by them, but yet in accordance with a law of the understanding; and as aesthetic, when it attains its highest degree of freedom in respect of the object, which it regards as material for a possible, not an actual and impending, act of cognition.

For the first and last of these functions Coleridge had already found a name and a description. To Kant's reproductive imagination corresponds the fancy, To the imagination as poetic Coleridge assigns, as we have seen, a far greater dignity and significance than Kant could possibly allow it. For in Kant's view even the highest activity of the imagination (its symbolical interpretation of beauty) has no warranty in the supersensuous ground of things. Meanwhile the second of these three functions, to Kant by far the most important (as a universal factor in knowledge), presented Coleridge with fresh matter for reflection. Here, too, it was impossible for him to stop short with Kant. That insight into reality which characterized the imagination in its highest potency must also

adhere to it in its universal use.

The fact that the poet,

in impressing his conscious self upon the world of objects, seemed to penetrate to the core of their being, might at least suggest the explanation of all knowledge as founded on a similar self-recognition of the subject in the object, and indicate the imagination as the organ of this recognition.

From Kant, however, Coleridge received no justification for such an hypothesis, though a suggestion might have been furnished in the unity of apperception as the basic principle of all acts of knowledge. On passing to the study of Fichte, he found a development of Kantean doctrine for which he had only a qualified approval. 'By commencing with an act, instead of a thing or substance ..., Fichte supplied the idea of a system truly metaphysical, and of a metaphysique truly systematic (i.e. having its spring and principle within itself). But this fundamental idea he overlaid with a heavy mass of mere notions. ... Thus his theory degenerates into a crude egoismus, a boastful and hyperstoic hostility to Nature, as lifeless, godless, and altogether unholy.' It is not difficult to understand how little such a conception of nature would be welcome to Coleridge. Nor could the account of the imagination in Fichte's system commend itself to him. For having no external foundation for its activity, this faculty is consumed in the perpetual endeavour to outstrip the limits of self, in a restless self-torture which issues in unsubstantial mockeries of creation. Such a conclusion, however much it might appeal to certain moods in Coleridge as in us all, was certainly inimical to the faith which never wholly deserted him-the belief in a Spirit which

1 Biog. Lit. i. 101-2.

2 Fichte, Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre (Werke, 1845), i. 214-16: 'Imagination is a power that sways to and fro between determination and non-determination, between finite and infinite.'

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spoke directly to the soul of man, but also revealed itself mediately through the forms of nature.

How far Coleridge's endeavours to find a philosophical expression for this faith had brought him when first his study of Schelling began, is a matter which cannot be accurately determined; nor what those 'genial coincidences' may have been, to which he alludes in the Biographia Literaria. The large verbal borrowings from Schelling in the course of the deduction of the imagination' suggest that when he began to write he had accepted Schelling's account of the faculty, or at least found his own conclusions happily expressed therein. Of these excerpts by far the greater number are taken from the Transcendental Idealism; it is, therefore, the account of the imagination presented in this work which concerns us here.

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Now to the imagination Schelling daringly assigns a function of high, indeed of the highest, dignity and importance. It is proclaimed as the organ of truth, and of truth not as the artist only, but as the philosopher apprehends it. And the quality, which makes it thus their common instrument, is the power of reconciling opposites in virtue of their inner unity; of discovering the ground of harmony between apparent contradictories. Such a reconciliation is demanded by transcendental philosophy. For the task of this philosophy is to discover in consciousness itself an explanation of the apparent contradiction involved in the fact, that the self or subject is conceived as both active and passive as regards the object, as both determining it and determined by it. Such a solution can take only one form: the recognition, namely, that these apparently opposed and unrelated activities are really but a twofold aspect of the same activity, that the power which determines is also the power which is determined. As