of the bond existing between it and the soul, if we regard on the one hand the divine source of the universe, and on the other the rational and responsible soul of man', as equally indifferent to and distinct from that universe itself. For the sense of this distinction was already strong in Coleridge's mind, and it became stronger as he grew older. But the difficulties which it raises were never satisfactorily solved. In Coleridge's later speculations the sphere and functions of art are considered less and less, and the imaginative interpretation of nature is never dealt with in the light of his maturer insight.

Not, indeed, that this 'irrelativeness' of the universe to its divine origin precludes its symbolic character. On the contrary, as we have seen, the analogy, of which existence is undeniable, between the sensible and spiritual worlds, is a mystery' of which God alone is the only solutionGod the one before all, and of all, and through all!'2 And as a mystery (Coleridge would add) it is incapable of further definition in the language of the understanding. All that really concerns us here to remember is that the participation of the universe in the divine life is neither to be conceived as an identity with that life nor as an essential condition of it. Similarly, man's essential characteristic, as a self-conscious spirit, is equally independent of his natural existence, and equally distinct from that existence, seeing that it derives immediately from its spiritual source. Yet neither does this preclude our regarding man, the individual, as the apex and crowning result of the process of nature, the concentrated expression of the purpose towards which she tends. What man is and

1 Cp. Essay on Life.

First Lay Sermon, App. B. Willst du das Höchste und

dir lehren,

2 First Lay Sermon, App. B. Cp. Schiller's lines:

Beste? Die Pflanze kann es

Was sie willenlos ist, sei du es willens, das ist's. See also Coleridge's Essay on Life.

realizes self-consciously (as a moral being) nature is and realizes unconsciously. Hence nature symbolizes the spiritual life of man, but cannot originate it. 'What the plant is by an act not its own and unconsciously-that thou must make thyself to become.' And of this unconscious symbolism of nature the man of artistic genius is the best interpreter. Both in virtue of his supreme selfknowledge and of his peculiar power of sympathy and intercommunion with nature, his is the mind best fitted to penetrate her hidden meaning, to understand her mute appeal, and to make it intelligible to others; and thus to aid nature in the revelation of her spiritual source. 'To you alone,' writes Coleridge to Allston in 1815, 'does it seem to have been given to know what nature is-not the dead shapes, the outward letter, but nature revealing itself in the phenomena, or rather attempting to reveal itself. Now the power of producing the true ideals is no other, in my belief, than to take the will for the deed. The great artist does that which nature would do, if only the disturbing forces were abstracted.' The entire elimination, indeed, of these 'disturbing forces' is, even to the artist, impossible; but its capacities of matter as a medium of spiritual expression are realized in the genuine work of art as they are not realized in nature itself. And to this end the conscious and unconscious activities in the artist work together. The unconscious (the genius in the man of genius) is, in effect, his spontaneous sympathy with the hidden purpose of things: the conscious is the selfcontrolled expression of that purpose in individual forms. And the harmony of conscious with unconscious (the

1 Cp. Goethe, Gespräche mit Eckermann, 1828: The artist who aims at achieving anything great must be capable ... of raising the inferior, real nature to the height of his own spirit, and making that actual which, in the phenomenal world, either from inherent weakness or outward obstacle, has remained mere intention.'

adequacy of execution to intention) constitutes the great artist and the perfect work.

VIII. LATER YEARS.

The lectures of 1818 embody Coleridge's last definite utterance on the nature of the poetic faculty, even if they do not represent his final point of view. From the first, as we have seen, his interest in the imagination was dominated by the purpose which inspired all his serious speculation, the purpose of establishing right principles of thought and action; and this primarily by the elucidation of the essential nature of human consciousness, and the distinction of its various constituents, or rather, modes of activity, in respect of their value and authority as instruments of truth. And as with increasing age his sense of aloofness from external things grew stronger, and his inward life gained in vividness and depth, he realized more and more the paramount importance of emphasizing and appealing to the purely spiritual consciousness as a common possession of all men. Thus imagination, as the faculty of mediate vision, is thrust into the background, while reason, the faculty of direct access to truth, claims a more exclusive attention. Aesthetic experience is subordinated to the experience in which the intuitions of reason find their surest witness, the 'testifying state' of conscience. This, of course, implies no change of attitude in Coleridge, for the significance of the moral consciousness had been among his earliest convictions: but it was in part a result of his own peculiar experience that the need for emphasizing this conviction grew stronger with the ripening years. To follow out in detail the conclusions to which Coleridge was led by this altered direction of thought, would exceed the scope of this introduction. Their main feature is strikingly illustrated

in the little Essay of Faith, which belongs to the later period of his life. In this it is the conscience, and the deliverances of conscience, which are represented, not merely as common, like the impressions of sense, to all thinking beings, but as the precondition of all experience. The individual, that is, first comes to consciousness of himself in the sense of his relation, as a personal will, to universal reason, which is apprehended as the obligation to bring the first into harmony with the second. The primary act of self-consciousness is not the consciousness of opposition to a world of objects, but to a larger spiritual self; and its formula is no longer 'I am', but rather 'I must'. 'The becoming conscious of a conscience is an act in and by which we take upon ourselves an allegiance, and consequently the obligation of fealty.' 'It is likewise the commencement of experience, and the result of all other experience. In other words, conscience, in this, its simplest form, must be supposed in order to consciousness, that is, to human consciousness.'

In thus emphasizing the priority of the moral to all other forms of experience, Coleridge does no more than proclaim a lifelong conviction. It is true that to this conviction he had sometimes (as in the disquisition of the Biographia Literaria) failed to attach due weight. But this, as we have seen, was one of the direct causes of the breaking-down in the chain of arguments by which he sought to establish the true nature of the imagination. For the distinguishing characteristic of that faculty, as from the first conceived by Coleridge, had been its power of interpreting the world of experience as a manifestation of a spiritual principle. And the possibility of such an

With this compare and contrast Schelling (Werke, i. 395): 'Only in willing is the mind directly conscious of its own activity, and the act of volition is the highest condition of selfconsciousness.'

insight was dependent upon a previous spiritual experience of which it was the symbol and guarantee.

The imagination thus appears as essentially allied to the moral consciousness; and art is the visible symbol of this relationship. For the imagination, as creative artistically, does but seek to give outward expression to the harmony of the personal and divine will, which conscience enjoins, or to the discord between them, which conscience condemns. This thought is characteristically expressed by Coleridge in commenting on a passage in an early work by Schelling, where it is asserted that the conception of a moral power outside of and above the world of sense is destructive of the aesthetic attitude towards that world. Der Gedanke, mich der Welt entgegenzusetzen (the thought of opposing myself to the world), not only hat nichts Grosses für mich (contains nothing elevating for me), but seems mere potvaliant nonsense, without the idea of a moral power extrinsic to and above the world. . . . How much more sublime and, in other points of view, how infinitely more beautiful, is the Hebrew idea of the world as at enmity with God, and of the continual warfare which calls forth every energy, both of act and endurance, from the neces sary vividness of worldly impressions, and the sensuous dimness of faith in the first struggles! Were the impulses and impresses from the faith in God equally vivid, then indeed all combat must cease, and we should have Hallelujahs for tragedies and statues.'1 This is, perhaps, the fullest expression which Coleridge has left of the main point of difference between himself and Schelling, and it is much to be regretted that the conception of the function of art which it indicates was never more fully developed by him.

A few concluding remarks are suggested by Coleridge's

1 Marginal Note to Schelling's Phil. Briefe über Dogmatismus u. Kriticismus (printed Biog. Lit., 2nd Edition, Vol. I, Appendix).