GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF COLERIDGE'S APPLICATION OF TH PRINCIPLE From one point of view Coleridge's use of the principle o the Reconciliation of Opposites might be taken as an attempt resolve certain general aesthetic and philosophical dualisms base upon distinctions and oppositions that he recognized as unsoun Imbued to some extent with the newer and larger interpretatio of metaphysical concepts inherent in the Kantian philosophy, joccasionally tries to do away with the dualism by translating o of the opposites into terms of the other. Thus he notes in o instance that the objectivity of an experience "consists in the un versality of its subjectiveness." Again, in a confused passag he seems to be trying to express the fact that the individual co sciousness is dependent for its very existence upon its relation other conscious beings. "From what reason do I believe in c tinuous and ever-continuable consciousness? From conscien Not for myself, but for my conscience, that is, my affections a duties towards others, I should have no self-for self is def tion, but all boundary implies neighbourhood and is knowable o by neighbourhood or relations." And in a semi-mystical vision sees matter reduced to terms of mind in a manner strangely s gestive of Bergson's matter-memory hypothesis: "I saw in ea youth, as in a dream, the birth of the planets; . . . All deviations. were seen as one intuition of one, the s same necessity, and this necessity was a law of spirit, and all spirit. And in matter all beheld the past activity of others their own and this reflection, this echo is matter-its only sence if essence it be." Sometimes, in his special concern for mind-matter dualism, he tries to work out what is almost a sys of psychophysical parallelism, a system which, while it does abolish the dualism, at least neutralizes all opposition.* Moreover, on the purely critical side, we might find in eridge's use of the principle simply an attempt to end, once for all, the conflict between the opposed concepts, reason and imagination, emphasized respectively by the classicists and the romanticists-if we may use the terms thus loosely, again an attempt to do away with a distinction he recognized as false. Real as the opposition may have been between the literary tendencies sponsored by the two schools, the concepts upon which they took their respective stands had, through their very opposition, developed until they became mutually inclusive instead of exclusive. This is generally recognized. With a criticism of literature increasingly wide in its scope and sensitive in its appreciation, the conception of reason, at one time associated with a narrow, arbitrary interpretation of the classical rules, developed, until, instead of negating, it came to include the freer genius of men like Spenser and Shakespeare, the sort of genius, or fancy as it was called, which would not fit the old formulas; on the other side, fancy developed into imagination, which did not negate, but included reason; as a consequence the conception of art came to include what had been incompatible opposites,-hence the definition of art as the union of reason and imagination, as the reconciliation of opposites. Without a doubt Coleridge had a near interest in bringing to an end, or to what seemed to him an end, the conflict between the reason and the imagination. With his fine appreciation of Shakespeare, and much in a literature that did not conform to the classic "rules," he could not rest satisfied with any narrowly rationalistic aesthetic theory; nor, with his essentially philosophic temperament, could he permanently rest without any theory; he had to find some law in the seemingly lawless." And his theory of the imagination, the question of plagiarism aside, has proved itself a positive constructive step in ending that form of the conflict then current. But I think no one can read Coleridge's works, especially his informal note-book jottings, without feeling that his interest in the principle was something more than an interest in reconciling a critical dualism based upon intellectual distinctions and oppositions that he recognized as artificial and unsound, the dualism of a conflict which belonged rightfully to the past. He seems to take positive delight in finding oppositions to reconcile.) He never tires of calling attention to the fact that extremes meet, but he is very evidently looking to find in nature as many pairs of extremes as possible. Like many workers of good works he * Cf. Wylie, Evolution of English Criticism, pp. 196-197. would be sadly disappointed if he could not find any evils to remedy. It is this positing of opposites fully as much as their reconciliation that is significant. We must not regard the principle as a means of recovery from some heaven-sent malady. As such, it is, from our standpoint, but a poor sort of recovery, brought about by artificial stimulants; for just as the dualism which Coleridge attempts to remedy is to us erroneously metaphysical and arbitrary, so many of his attempts at synthesis are bound to seem formal. Much that he says on this subject is, we must admit, a kind of talk that seems to bear verbal witness to some mode of reconciliation, but does not actually help the process along very much. And yet it is with this kind of talk, quite as much as with his more fully worked out theory of the imagination that we must concern ourselves if we are to understand the nature of the concrete critical applications of the principle. It would, I think, be fair to call Coleridge's interest in the principle of the Reconciliation of Opposites a constitutional malady. Throughout his writings, particularly those informal notes to which students turn for some of his keenest and most characteristic utterances, we find him luxuriating as it were, in the meeting of extremes. He owns up to it himself: "I should like to know whether or how far the delight I feel, and have always felt, in adages or aphorisms of universal or very extensive application is a general or common feeling with men, or a peculiarity of my own mind. I cannot describe how much pleasure I have derived from 'Extremes meet,' for instance, or "Treat everything according to its nature,' and, the last, 'Be!' In the last I bring all inward rectitude to its test, in the former all outward morality to its rule, and in the first all problematic results to their solution, and reduce apparent contraries to correspondent opposites. How many hostile tenets has it enabled me to contemplate as fragments of truth, false only by negation and mutual exclusion?" He is not fastidious as to the objects of his reflections. His philosophical sense is satisfied by contemplating such pairs of meeting extremes as dark and excess of light, self-absorption and worldlymindedness, nothing and intensest absolute being; it is equally well satisfied to note that the "tooth-ache, where the suffering is not extreme, often finds its speediest cure in the silent pillow; and gradually destroys our attention to itself by preventing us from "A. P., pp. 300-301. A. P., p. 53. attending to anything else;" and, again, that "the thing that causes instability in a particular state, of itself causes stability. For instance, wet soap slips off the ledge-detain it till it dries a little, and it sticks." His whole mental make-up is so permeated by the conscious ness of opposition that even his sense experiences come to him in terms of the great elemental sense contrasts, such as rest and motion. Evidence of this is to be found in numerous jottings collected in the Anima Poetae. "In the foam-islands in a fiercely boiling pool, at the bottom of a water-fall, there is sameness from infinite change."10 "The spring with the little tiny cone of loose sand ever rising and sinking at the bottom, but its surface without a wrinkle."1 "The steadfast rainbow in the fast moving, fasthurrying hail mist! What a congregation of images and feelings, of fantastic permanence amidst the rapid change of the tempest-quietness the daughter of storm.12 "The immoveableness of all things through which so many men were moving-a harsh contrast compared with the universal motion, the harmonious system of motions in the country, and everywhere in Nature. In the dim light London appeared to be a huge place of sepulchres through which hosts of spirits were gliding."13 Under his gaze the world becomes the expression, half metaphysical, half concrete, of unity and variety.14 "Oh, said I, as I looked at the blue, yellow green and purple-green sea, with all its hollows and swells, and cut-glass surfaces-oh, what an ocean of lovely forms! And I was vexed, teased that the sentence sounded like a play of words! That it was not-The mind within me was struggling to express the marvellous distinctness and unconfounded personality of each of the million millions of forms, and yet the individual unity in which they subsisted."15 Again, "The ribbed flame-its snatches of impatience, that half seem and only seem that half, to baffle its upward rush,—the eter "For a full and appreciative discussion of Coleridge's habit of combining perception and speculation, see Aynard, La Vie d'un Poëte, Chap. VIII, especially pp. 235-55. 15 A. P., p. 100. nal unity of individualities whose essence is in their distinguishableness, even as thought and fancies in the mind."16 Sometimes his observations are more philosophical, and sometimes even psychological: "How strange and awful is the synthesis of life and death in the gusty winds and falling leaves of an autumnal day!" "The dim intellect sees an absolute oneness, the perfectly clear intellect knowingly perceives it. Distinction and plurality lie in the betwixt."18 The union of the one and the many is, he explains, "the co-presence of feeling and life, limitless by their very essence, with form by its very essence limited, determinable, definite." And again,-"O the complexities of the ravel produced by time struggling with eternity! a and b are different, and eternity or duration makes them one-this we call modification-the principle of all greatness in finite beings, the principle of all contradiction and absurdity."2 Not infrequently the paradox is verbal, depending for its significance and its resolution upon the double meaning of some term. It is not a casual play on words. There are involved the logical opposition and the logical dual meanings that characterize all antitheses. "Shadow-its being subsists in shaped and definite A. P., p. 155.-Coleridge's psychological genius is rapidly coming to be recognized, and for this the publication of the Anima Poetae is in no small measure responsible. A reviewer wrote of this book when it first appeared: "As one lays it down one is struck with the astonishing and unrelaxing faculty of self-introspection, analysis, and original thought that the book displays." (Westminster Rev. CXLV: 537.) And C. E. Vaughan in the Cambridge History (Vol. XI, p. 152), writes as follows: "In the... field of psychology, his results are both sounder in themselves [than in metaphysics] and more absolutely his own. His records of the working of the mind, especially under abnormal or morbid conditions, are extraordinarily minute and subtle. It would hardly be too much to say that he is the founder of what has since become a distinct, and most fruitful branch of philosophy: the study of experimental psychology. And this, which is fully known only to those who are familiar with Anima Poeta, is, perhaps his most original contribution to philosophy." Elton writes (A Survey of English Literature, Vol. II, p. 106) that his "psychological genius is the link between Coleridge's art and his thinking, and works most surely of all when his thinking is turned upon art itself, in the analysis of his intuitions of Shakespeare or Wordsworth." Again, he notes (pp. 120-1) that his "digressive spinning of thought out of thought is |