ulative interest in art as art. The early nineteenth century had such an interest, and we find in certain instances that, in the face of this new fascinating value-Art, or the Absolute that it expresses-almost everything else that was considered at all in this connection was reduced to that state of relative indifference characterizing the formula of antithesis. Rest and Motion, the Vital and the Formal, Man and Nature, all were the logically opposed constituents of the definition. And yet in as far as they were reconciled, their meanings were raised (through the sense of this new value) to a higher plane. The principle signified an almost supreme interest in art. However great the social and economic unrest may have been, and however this may have expressed itself, there was to be found in the early nineteenth century a speculative and idealistic philosophic consciousness that had transcended moral and religious conflicts and could accept the universe as a whole. And for this consciousness art had become as big as the universe. The wholesomeness of the attitude involved may be questioned. Abstract speculation was frequently carried too far, and in the aesthetic field, as Kuno Francke suggests in his discussion of Schiller's valuation of art, the "apotheosis of art" may have done "injustice to other forms of human activity." But, unwholesome or not, the fact remains; the period evinces such an interest, and this is what we find expressed in the principle of the Reconciliation of Opposites.

3. DIFFERENT FORMS OF THE PRINCIPLE

If the logical investigation of Coleridge's antitheses is to be of anything but the most general sort it will be necessary at the outset to consider carefully two different kinds of opposition, both of which we find figuring in nineteenth century philosophic and aesthetic concepts.

To formulate art as the union of such logical opposites as Rest and Motion, the One and the Many, or Man and Nature--let the metaphysical terms be what they may-is obviously a very different thing from saying that opposition, symmetry, or contrast

10 "I shall not here dwell on the question whether this apotheosis of art does not do injustice to other forms of human activity. What led Schiller to these, we should be inclined to say, over-statements, was probably the absence in the Germany of his time of a healthy public life which could have taught him the value of any kind of strenuous productive work." (German Ideals of Today, pp. 81-2.)

s a fundamental structural principle of art, or even from saying as De Quincey says of the Art of Conversation, that the essence of the matter lies in "the electric kindling of life between two minds.' 9917 In the one case there is an antithesis consisting of terms that are logically opposed, that is, terms whose meanings are opposed; there is no attempt to reflect any structural opposition evident in the work of art. In the other case there is opposition without a doubt, but the terms have no logically opposed meanings, they are identical units opposed only spatially; the opposition is the scientifically real opposition of the actual structure. The difference is clearly expressed in the following passage taken from an essay of Eucken's: "Contradiction reveals a totally different sort of relationship from any which is to be seen in the mechanical realm. It is not a collision of spatial elements but an incompatibility of content. This brings us to the concept of content, which is absolutely incomprehensible from the mechanical point of view."18 We have the logical antithesis in which the terms have meaning or contents, and the mechanical opposition which is merely a space or direction formula but for that very reason reflects more directly than the other the structural opposition revealed in scientific analysis.19

It may be questioned whether these two sets of formulae are really forms of the same principle, but the question must be answered in the affirmative, for the mechanical formula has the same general logical significance that belongs to logical antithesis. It was found in the general analysis of antithesis that a certain balance, indifference, and even identity of terms is an essential characteristic; in the process of being brought together in antithesis the terms are losing their old meanings, being rendered indifferent and in a sense identical. Now in the mechanical formula the terms have completely lost their meanings and are identical,-equal, and opposed only in direction. The formula gives the limiting case of a process that is going on in all antithesis. Further, it was found to be characteristic that the terms are not simply losing their old meanings but are through the media

17 Works, Vol. X, p. 268.

18 Main Currents, p. 183.

19 Such a concept as De Quincey's of the opposition between two minds cannot be viewed as a piece of structural analysis, since it is the creative process instead of the finished product that is being analyzed, but the process itself in this case is being scientifically or mechanically construed.

tion of some new value being transformed and thus acquiring new meanings. Here again the logic of antithesis holds in the mechanical case, for it must be recognized that we construe the universe in terms of balanced elements or forces, that is, construe it mechanically, according to the general formula, Action = Reaction, only when we are contemplating it as means to some end, when we are exploiting present values in the interest of some new value about to be created.20 Thus the mechanical antithesis also implies a process of transvaluation.

As a matter of fact in English criticism the two forms may be seen merging, the one into the other. It is no far cry from the formula of the union of the One and the Many, or of the Subject and the Object, to such a formula as is found in Coleridge's analysis of intelligence, taken over from Schelling. Intelligence is, he writes, "an indestructible power with two opposite and counteracting forces, which, by a metaphor borrowed from astronomy, we may call the centrifugal and centripetal forces. The intelligence in the one tends to objectize itself, and in the other to know itself in the object."21 As soon as the terms of the antithesis have thus become forces opposed merely in direction, they are reduced to the concept of scientific or mechanical opposition, though it is to be noted, the concept is used here frankly as an analogy only.

It is evident that in studying Coleridge's use of the principle of the Reconciliation of Opposites it is not enough to consider the general logical implication of the principle. There are two typical forms of the principle, the metaphysical and the mechanical, and it is necessary to distinguish between the two, since, as has been suggested already and will be further indicated later, they differ widely in significance.

20 I am here using Professor Lloyd's interpretation of Kant's category of reciprocity.

21 Works, Vol. III, p. 350.

CHAPTER I.

SOME ASPECTS OF COLERIDGE'S PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT IN THEIR BEARING ON THE PRINCIPLE OF THE

RECONCILIATION OF OPPOSITES

Coleridge's philosophical sympathies were such as to make him particularly hospitable to the principle of the Reconciliation of Opposites. Although fundamentally an eclectic, hence quite inconsistent, he yet had certain fairly definite leanings which played no small part in determining his attitude toward this method of defining art. From a number of casual remarks it is evident that he was strongly impressed with the necessity of always empha-L sizing the positive rather than the negative. He makes a memorandum "Always to bear in mind that profound sentence cf Leibnitz that men's intellectual errors consist chiefly in denying. What they affirm with feeling is, for the most part, right—if it be a real affirmation, and not affirmative in form, negative in reality." "Great good," he exclaims, "therefore, of such revolution as alters, not by exclusion, but by an enlargement that includes the former, though it places it in a new point of view." Hence in his philosophizing he could not stop short of some positive principle. But for one so steeped as Coleridge was in the atmosphere of mutually conflicting concepts this principle could not be one of easy-going optimism,-it must recognize the opposition even in the act of transcending it.

Moreover, even as he was averse to ultimate negation and contradiction, so he was to any form of division, signifying, as it must, mutual exclusion. Distinction he would allow, but never, as a fundamental philosophical fact, division. "O! the power of names to give interest," he exclaims. "This is Africa! That is Europe! There is division, sharp boundary, abrupt change! and what are they in nature? Two mountain banks that make a noble river of the interfluent sea, not existing and acting with distinctness and manifoldness indeed, but at once and as one-no division, no change, no antithesis!" Anything of ultimate value

3

2A. P., p. 169.

Cf. Wylie, Evolution of English Criticism, pp. 196-197.

'Cf. Biographia Literaria, ed. Shawcross. Vol. I, p. LXXXVII.

"A. P., p. 71.

must for Coleridge consist of elements which, while they may be distinguished, are yet capable of real fusion. And it is this kind of reality which expresses itself in the Reconciliation of Opposites as it could not in any mechanical sum of similarly conceived parts, in any of the theories of the atomists that he so despised.

6

Of even more immediate significance than such specific philosophic tenets, is Coleridge's general method of philosophizing, his attitude towards speculative thought. For there is that in Colcridge's criticism which inevitably brings the investigator back, sooner or later, to a study of the man's philosophical temperament. We can partially explain the strength of his critical efforts as the outgrowth, though a somewhat reactionary one, of earlier English criticism, or as the fairly direct assimilation of German philosophy. We can partially explain their weakness as the result of the peculiarly difficult situation that had to be faced.' But in spite of all definable historic causes and sources, probably no writer has attempted a thorough-going discussion of Coleridge's criticism without finding that he was having to deal to an unwonted extent with a personality. Certainly it is next to impossible to consider Coleridge's use of the principle of the Reconciliation of Opposites except in the light of his philosophical temperament. It matters little which way we put it: the temper of his speculative thinking strongly colored his use of this principle; or, the principle had so insinuated itself into his thinking that it to some degree determined his philosophical temper. The consideration of the one is practically essential to an interpretation of the other.

There would be little use in attempting any really new analysis of Coleridge's temperament. The subject has been dealt with by many critics, and their efforts have resulted in not a few most happy characterizations. It is simply necessary to call to mind certain pertinent aspects of the matter.

Critics have never hesitated to take Coleridge's word for it that he sought refuge from life and finally even from art in a somewhat isolated world of metaphysical speculation. The evidence is only too patent. First principles and the Absolute are accepted as his prime interests. Even his intuitive recognition of the scientific, evolutionary trend that thought was taking has