justifies rhyme, which had long been criticized as unnatural, by calling attention to the fact "that the speakers are historical, known, and so far formal, characters, and their reality is already a fact." And again he notes "the skill and judgment of our poet in giving reality and individual life, by the introduction of accidents in his historic plays, and thereby making them dramas, and not histories." Of King Lear he writes: "It may here be worthy of notice, that Lear is the only serious performance of Shakspeare, the interest and situations of which are derived from the assumption of a gross improbability; whereas Beaumont and Fletcher's tragedies are, almost all of them, founded on some out of the way accident or exception to the general experience of mankind. But observe the matchless judgment of our Shakspeare. First, improbable as the conduct of Lear is in the first scene, yet it was an old story rooted in the popular faith,-a thing taken for granted already, and consequently without any of the effect of improbability. Secondly, it is merely the canvass for the characters and passions,—a mere occasion for,—and not, in the manner of Beaumont and Fletcher, perpetually recurring as the cause, and sine qua non, of,-the incidents and emotion." 4. PROBLEM OF UNITY 9958 The synthesis of unity and variety issues, in Coleridge's concrete applications of the principle, in the conception of organic unity. If the objective expression is the result of a "growth from within," that is, if the formal is the expression of the vital, then the unity of the resultant work will be the unity of fusion rather than combination, there will be intricate interrelations, even "evolution" of thought. Of Jonson Coleridge notes that "in all his works, in verse or prose, there is an extraordinary opulence of thought; but it is the product of an amassing power in the author, and not of a growth from within."59 Again, "Shak speare's intellectual action is wholly unlike that of Ben Jonson or Beaumont and Fletcher. The latter see the totality of a sentence or passage, and then project it entire. Shakspeare goes on creating, and evolving, B. out of A., and C. out of B., and so on, just as a serpent moves, which makes a fulcrum of its own body, and seems forever twisting and untwisting its own strength." "In Shakspeare one sentence begets the next naturally; the meaning is all inwoven. He goes on kindling like a meteor through the dark atmosphere; yet, when the creation in its outline is once perfect, then he seems to rest from his labor, and to smile upon his work, and tell himself that it is very good. You see many scenes and parts of scenes which are simply Shakspeare's disporting himself in joyous triumph and vigorous fun after a great achievement of his highest genius."1 It is evident from these quotations that the reconciliation of unity and variety involved the reconciliation of many other fundamental pairs of opposites. When the objective unity is conceived as the result of a growth from within it means the reconciliation of the subjective and objective, man and nature, the formal and the vital; and in the last quoted comment on Shakespeare there is clearly implied the union of rest and motion. In certain other instances the reconciliation is between the past and the future: in the notes on Hamlet Coleridge remarks that Shakespeare's opening scenes often "place before us at one glance both the past and the future in some effect, which implies the continuance and full agency of its cause."62 The "anticipations" evident in the character of Richard "illustrate his care to connect the past and future, and unify them with the present by forecast and reminiscence."63 I think we may say of Coleridge's applications of the princi ple to these specific problems that they are of theoretical as well as of interpretative significance. The metaphysical conceptions that were always at least in the background of his consciousness served to sharpen his critical insight, and in so doing justified their existence; but the combination of the metaphysical theory and the concrete observations resulted in a criticism that doe more than deepen the layman's appreciation of the works criti cised. In Coleridge's analyses that are based upon the principl of the Reconciliation of Opposites, there are many suggestions fo the theorist. The extent to which Coleridge deserves credit fo originality in these suggestions is not my problem. The theoris may seek them elsewhere if he will; in the meanwhile, they ar here-and quantities of them-and in a most alluring form. Coleridge's use of the principle of the Reconciliation of Opposites is in a sense out of date. His Opposites are, in the main, metaphysical concepts rather than mechanical forces or other scientifically real elements. And as with dualism in general, so with such a principle as this,-the present day is rather more concerned with the countless actual oppositions and reconciliations disclosed by a scientific analysis of life than with the metaphysical formulae that seem to symbolize them. Of the two forms of the principle, the mechanical and the metaphysical, considered in the introduction to this paper, the mechanical is distinctly more "modern," construing the world, as it does, according to the formula Action = Reaction, defining Art in the terms of psychological action and reaction, bringing out in the concrete work of art the actual structural oppositions. And yet, admirably as the mechanical form serves its purpose, it does so necessarily at the cost of certain elements of value found in the metaphysical form. It is difficult to express even relatively ultimate values in scientific and mechanical terms, for the mechanical construction of the universe is avowedly a means, not an end,1 and a means to an infinite number of individual ends that cannot be summed up in any general mechanical formula. It follows that in the mechanical form of antithesis there can be little suggestion of ultimate values. The terms are indifferent characterless units, that have even lost their distinguishing names. The oppositions and reconciliations of art, according to this view, are not those of Man and Nature, the Vital and the Formal, the Individual and the Universal (all significant concepts), but those of forces or structural elements, conceived as identical units opposed only spatially. Even in De Quincey's formula cited above-"the electrical kindling of life between two minds" -the minds are any two minds, that is, scientific units. It is true that in all antithesis there is balance and indifference. The terms of even the metaphysical antithesis are losing their traditional values. But they retain at least their individualizing 56. VHLORD KVKA The Reconciliation of Opposites arties, and these serve to express the new values being acquired; whereas in any mechanical balance of forces the value must be taken on faith-it is not expressed. It is evident then that the more modern form of the principle cannot give the immediate suggestion of values, the sense of quality, of something ultimate, that characterizes the metaphysical form. It will be necessary, of course, to "reconcile" the two forms by using each as a criticism of the other. But it has not been my purpose in this paper to carry the process of reconciliation very far; my attempt has been simply to define and analyze Coleridge's uses of the principle and in so doing indicate to some slight extent the significance of even the out-of-date metaphysical antithesis. As appeared when the matter was viewed from the logical standpoint, the principle of the Reconciliation of Opposites indicates an interest in art as art that characterized Coleridge's time. Moreover, the use of the principle, especially in its metaphysical form, was thoroughly characteristic of Coleridge; not simply the reconciliation, but also the positing of the opposites, was with him what might be called a "constitutional" habit, thoroughly in keeping with the generally recognized nature of his philosophical thinking. In his unsystematic applications of the principle to life and to art Coleridge used it, on the one hand, as a general formula for all experience, taking real delight in the mere discovery of its applicability, and on the other hand, as a norm, as a means of indicating the beauty and the wholesomeness of the ideal, and rather incidentally of implying the defectiveness of much of the actual. With its immediate suggestions of ultimate values and with its admirable adaptation to corrective uses it served excellently as a standard. Coleridge's use of the principle in aesthetic theory and literary criticism sometimes showed, as we should expect, confusion between the mtaphysical or logical and the psychological or scientific standpoint, but ordinarily, whichever the standpoint, it found expression in much valuable criticism. It issued, especially in his Shakespeare criticism, in suggestive analyses of dramatic character and situation and in many hints as to the essential nature of the dramatic element. Moreover, in accordance with the law of dual meanings involved in all antithesis it served to indicate the larger and in general psychologically sound interpretations of the fundamental aesthetic concepts and of such critical doctrines as those of tragedy and comedy, imitation, and unity. BIBLIOGRAPHY NARD, J.-La Vie d'un Poëte, Paris. 1907. History of Aesthetic. London. 1904. 1895. Logic, or the Morphology of Knowledge. Oxford. 1888. RANDES, G. M. C.-Die Hauptströmungen der Litteratur des neunzehnten jahrhunderts. Leipzig. 1894. RANDL, A.-Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the English Romantic School. Tr. Lady Eastlake. London. 1887. AMPBELL, J. D.—Samuel Taylor Coleridge. London. 1894. ESTRE, C.-La Revolution Française et les Poëtes Anglais. Paris. 1906. COLERIDGE, S. T.-Anima Poetae. Ed. E. H. Coleridge. London. 1895. Biographia Literaria. Ed. Shawcross. Oxford. 1907. Works, N. Y. 1856-1875. DE QUINCEY, T.-Posthumous Works. Ed. A. H. Japp. London. 1891. Works. Ed. Masson. Edinburgh. 1890. DEWEY, J.-Significance of the Problem of Knowledge, in University of Chicago Contributions to Philosophy. Chicago. 1897. DOWDEN, E.-New Studies in Literature. London. 1906. Studies in Literature. Boston. 1895. ELTON, OLIVER.-Survey of English Literature, 1780-1830. Lon don, 1912. EUCKEN, R.-Collected Essays. Ed. and Tr. Booth. London. 1914. Main Currents of Modern Thought. Tr. Booth. London. 1913. Problem of Human Life. Tr. Hough. N. Y. 1909. FERRIER.-Plagiarisms of S. T. Coleridge. Blackwood's, Vol. XLVII. FRANKE, K.-German Ideals of Today. Boston. 1907. Social Forces in German Literature. N. Y. 1897. |