Blind to the Real Presence:
Coleridge and the Tension of Opposites
As much as any writer, and certainly more
than most, Samuel
Taylor
Coleridge actively seeks for coincidences of opposites.
According
to N. M. Goldsmith,
Coleridge was thinking out thoughts which
had been half
conscious in Pope and a number of other men
of a religious
temperament since the seventeenth century,
. . . the feeling
that a mechanistic theory of the mind which
denied the
validity of intuition, concentrating
instead on men's
capacity for deduction and analysis, was a
philosophy of
death.
<1>
Thus,
as Coleridge develops his theories of the coincidence of
opposites
and other theories of the way the mind works, he will
be
carrying on many of the ideas that Pope developed, although in
most
cases he tries to take them further. <2>
Unlike Pope, Coleridge gives a particularly
personal slant to
the
problem of the coincidence of opposites.
Sometimes,
especially
in his philosophical prose, Coleridge does present a
generalized,
overall discussion of the problem, but most often,
especially
in his poetry, he explores the issue from an intensely
personal
point of view. The problem tears him
apart and he
reveals
that tearing most painfully and most despairingly.
I do not intend to review all aspects of
his struggles with
opposites,
which have been thoroughly studied by many critics,
but
simply to set out some of the main lines of Coleridge's
interest,
leading up to one of his late poems, "Lines Suggested
by the
Last Words of Berengarius," a poem that
epitomizes the
dead
end in which Coleridge found himself when he tried to
reconcile
opposing forces in his poetry. My line
of inquiry will
show
how, even though Coleridge seems largely to come to terms
with
the issue of the coincidentia oppositorum in his
philosophical
writings, he finds dead ends instead of solutions
in his
poetry. I do not belittle
Coleridge. I admire his
bravery
as much as Richard Holmes and Thomas McFarland do in
passages
quoted below. Rather, his heroic
struggles give us a
sense
of the enormous difficulty of the problem and allow us to
admire
Shelley's and Blake's solutions even more.
Coleridge's desire to reconcile opposites
is closely
connected
to his desire to see wholeness whenever possible. In
his
essay "On Method" he defines the superior man in terms of
wholeness:
What is that which first strikes us, and
strikes us at once,
in a man of education, and which, among
educated men, so
instantly distinguishes the man of superior
mind? Not the
weight or novelty of his remarks; not any
unusual interest of
facts communicated by him. . . . It is the unpremeditated
and evidently habitual arrangement of his
words, grounded on
the habit of foreseeing, in each integral
part, or (more
plainly) in every sentence, the whole that
he then intends to
communicate. However irregular and desultory his talk,
there
is method in the fragments.<3>
Similarly,
when Coleridge contemplates writing an epic, the
encyclopedic
genre of wholeness, he can be satisfied with nothing
less
than all. While most writers of epic do
feel a need to
surpass
the accomplishments of their predecessors, <4> Coleridge
seems
unable to omit anything. In a letter to
Joseph Cottle in
early
April 1797, after agreeing with Wordsworth "that Southey
writes
too much at his ease," Coleridge laments Southey's
reliance
"too much on story and event in his poems, to the
neglect
of those lofty imaginings, that are peculiar to, and
definitive
of, the poet." Meditating by
contrast on
Samuel
Taylor Coleridge imagines his epic:
The story of Milton [Paradise Lost] might
be told in two
pages--it is this which distinguishes an
Epic Poem from a
Romance in metre. Observe the march of
application, his laborious polish, his deep
metaphysical
researches, his prayers to God before he
began his great
poem, all that could lift and swell his
intellect, became his
daily food.
I should not think of devoting less than 20
years to an Epic Poem. Ten to collect materials and warm my
mind with universal science. I would be a tolerable
Mathematician, I would thoroughly know
Mechanics,
Hydrostatics, Optics, and Astronomy,
Botany, Metallurgy,
Fossilism,
Chemistry, Geology, Anatomy, Medicine--then the
mind of man--then the minds of men--in all
Travels, Voyages
and Histories. So I would spend ten years--the next five to
the composition of the poem--and the five
last to the
correction of it. So I would write haply not unhearing of
that divine and rightly-whispering Voice,
which speaks to
mighty minds of predestinated
unwithering.
<5>
Future
whispers of glory notwithstanding, such an ambitious
project
seems almost doomed to failure from the start.
If
Coleridge
insists on including everything, and on having all
knowledge
before getting started, he must fall short.
Many commentators on Coleridge have noted
this encompassing
tendency,
which Thomas McFarland defines as fundamental to
Coleridge
and to his age:
To understand Coleridge's thought, both in
its own structure
and in its relationship to the thought of
his contemporaries,
it is necessary to refer all its
manifestations constantly
and explicitly to the systematic unity, the
total organism
which he, and almost all other thinkers of
his era, accepted
as the necessary condition of any
intellectual activity at
all.
<6>
McFarland
explains this tendency as a responsibility to vast
amounts
of data, based on a philosophical belief in complexity
rather
than simplicity, in accumulation rather than
improvisation:
If one tends to travel light
intellectually, to live, as it
were, out of a suitcase--after the manner
of Wittgenstein, or
Schlick, or even
of Socrates--then no great housekeeping
abilities are called for; but if one tends
to admit
intellectual responsibility for an enormous
amount of data,
with a continuing urge to accumulate still
more, then the
internal economy of this intellectual
establishment becomes
increasingly important. It is this
principle of internal
economy that we call system. <7>
As a
philosophical system, such inclusiveness is more than
admirable. It seems the apex of liberal, educated open-
mindedness. What McFarland sees as Coleridge's central
idea sets 3
up a
principle of inclusion that requires the thinker to include
almost
all possible systems of thought:
The deeper . . . we penetrate into the
ground of things, the
more truth we discover in the doctrines of
the greater number
of the philosophical sects. . . . all these we shall find
united in one perspective central point,
which shows
regularity and a coincidence of all the
parts in the very
object, which from every other point of
view must appear
confused and distorted. The spirit of sectarianism has been
hitherto our fault, and the cause of our
failures. We have
imprisoned our own conceptions in the
lines, which we have
drawn, in order to exclude the conceptions
of others.
[Coleridge then quotes Leibniz] J'ai trouve que la plupart
des sectes ont
raison dans une bonne partie de ce qu'elles
avancent, mais
non pas tant en ce qu'elles nient. [my
translation: I have found that most sects
are quite correct
in most of what they proclaim but not so correct
in what they
deny.] <8>
The
lack of inclusiveness arises from the exclusion of opposites
from
most systems of thought. Any partial
truth is limited if it
does
not acknowledge the truths that oppose it, because it
relegates
those opposing truths to the category of falsehood:
. . . the most influencive
Errors have ever been . . .
partial Truths mistaken for the whole
Truth, Truths divorced
from their correspondent and supporting
opposites, and
coverted into
contrary Falsehoods by being reciprocally
unbalanced and disintegrated . . . he alone
deserves the name
of a Philosopher, who has attained to see
and learnt to
supply the difference between Contraries
that preclude, and
Opposites that reciprocally suppose and
require, each the
other.
<9>
Over
and over again, Coleridge explicitly sets such open-minded
inclusiveness
as his goal:
'My system,' he told his nephew, 'if I may
venture to give it
so fine a name, is the only attempt I know
ever made to
reduce all knowledges
into harmony. It opposes no other
system, but shows what was true in each;
and how that which
was true in the particular, in each of them
became error,
because it was only half the truth.'
<10>
Keats
was one of the first to recognize the probable result of
such an
attempt at vast inclusiveness. In his
definition of
Negative
Capability, he finds in Shakespeare an example to be
admired,
but in Coleridge an example to be lamented:
several things dovetailed in my mind, &
at once it struck me,
what quality went to form a Man of
Achievement especially in
Literature & which Shakepeare
posessed so enormously--I mean
Negative Capability, that is when man is
capable of being in
uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without
any irritable
reaching after fact &
reason--Coleridge, for instance, would
let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude
caught from the
Penetralium of
mystery, from being incapable of remaining
content with half knowledge.
<11>
While we can lament the negative result of
Coleridge's system
building,
we can also praise what he did accomplish:
The rich multi-level quality of Coleridge's
imagination was
obviously achieved at tremendous cost. It contains terrible
tensions and contradictions. . . . the
essential terms of
Coleridge's reconciling system are
dialectical. They stem
initially from his awareness of
contradictions within his own
experience, . . . between radical disbelief and traditional
faith. . . . when he read Kant's Critique
of Pure Reason . .
. Coleridge found the fundamental
encroachment of the subject
upon the object in human experience. In the Aids to
Reflection he urged, as the greatest
assistance to clear
thinking, the re-introduction into English
of 'subjective'
and 'objective' reality--terms which are
now in completely
current use. <12>
Thus,
within the concern for systematic wholeness, Coleridge
insists
on the inclusion of opposites. One of
the primary sets
of
opposites of course is that between subject and object, which
also
can be defined as inner and outer:
The notebooks record the collisions of a
hugely developed
sense of inner reality with a hugely
developed sense of outer
reality, with neither sense giving
ground. <13>
As so
often, Coleridge mocks his extreme interest in this issue,
making
it into a weakness that bores his listeners.
He makes the
issue
extremely personal as he implicitly, like Keats,
participates
in all of existence. His delight in
revealing
differences
(we shall later encounter the term desynonomize) is
overcome
by his delight in making connections, as the circling
ripples
of his imagination try to include all:
I feel too intensely the omnipresence of
all in each,
platonically speaking, or psychologically
my brain-fibres or
the spiritual light which abides in the
brain marrow, as
visible light appears to do in sundry
rotten mackerel and
other smashy
matters is of too general an affinity with all
things.
And though it perceives the difference of things,
yet is eternally pursuing the likeness, or
rather that which
is common. Bring me two things that seem
the very same, and
then I am quick enough to shew the difference, even to hair-
splitting; but to go on from circle to
circle till I break
against the shore of my hearer's patience
or have my
Concentricals
dashed to nothing by a Snore, this is my
ordinary mishap. <14>
Through these pathways of logic Coleridge
continues to
explore
the question. Although he tries to
penetrate the
coincidence
of opposites, the problem always remains a stand-off
for him. As the foundation of his always promised opus
maximum,
it may
have prevented him from completing that amibitious
project:
It was with logic as the focal point that
Coleridge early
began his investigation of the
'Coincidentia oppositorum,'
the idea of the reconciliation of
opposites. By 1803 he had
formulated a detailed prospectus of his
'great work.' <15>
His project to fill a notebook with
examples of "extremes
meet"
was based on his belief that all philosophy was contained
in that
phrase:
Extremes meet--a proverb, by the bye, to
collect and explain
all the instances and exemplifications of
which would
constitute and exhaust all philosophy. <16>
This obsession with opposites dominates
much of Coleridge's
writing,
both poetic and philosophical. In the Biographia he
even
defines contraries as the basis not only of philosophy but
of all
creation:
the transcendental philosopher says; grant
me a nature having
two contrary forces, the one of which tends
to expand
infinitely, while the other strives to
apprehend or find
itself in this infinity, and I will cause
the world of
intelligences with the whole system of
their representations
to rise up before you. <17>
Thus,
in Coleridge, as in Cusanus, the entire philosophical
structure
begins with a statement of contrary forces, centrifugal
and
centripetal.
Although Coleridge wants all, although
nothing less than the
whole
Truth will satisfy him, again and again he finds reasons to
back
away from the holistic vision that attracts him. One of the
most
excruciating tensions of contraries that Coleridge felt
himself
caught in was the tension between pantheism and
orthodoxy. His conversation poem "The Aeolian Harp,"
composed in
1795,
illustrates that tension. After setting
a scene of
domestic
bliss with cottage and wife, inspired like almost every
Romantic
poet by the Aeolian Harp, Coleridge suddenly imagines
. . . the one Life within us and abroad,
Which
meets all motion and becomes its soul,
A light in sound, a sound-like power in
light,
Rhythm in all thought, and joyance every
where--
Methinks, it should have been impossible
Not to love all things in a world so fill'd
. . .
And
what if all of animated nature
Be but organic Harps diversely fram'd,
That tremble into thought, as o'er them
sweeps
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
At once the Soul of each, and God of all?
But thy more serious eye a mild reproof
Darts, O beloved Woman! nor such thoughts
Dim and unhallow'd
dost thou not reject,
And biddest me
walk humbly with my God.
Meek Daughter in the family of Christ!
Well hast thou said and holily disprais'd
These shapings fo the unregenerate mind;
Bubbles that glitter as they rise and break
On vain Philosophy's aye-babbling spring.
As we see in this poem, Coleridge will have
good reason to
sympathize
with the Berengarius (see discussion below) who had
trouble
perceiving the Real Presence in the Eucharist and who
found
himself struggling between conscience and the Pope. No
matter
how hard he tries in his poetry to achieve this oneness
with
all of life, Coleridge always falls back into isolation:
The quest for a 'something one &
indivisible' underlying and
animating the world is perhaps above all
others the unifying
principle of Coleridge's multifarious
writings, although it
will be seen how his statement of the 'One
Life' is
persistently checked and qualified. <18>
Because
of his sensitivity to his audience, in this case his wife
Sara as
spokesman for orthodox Christianity, Coleridge recants
his
pantheism almost as soon as it is spoken.
For, like
Bernegarius, whom I will discuss at the end of this chapter, he
will
not be able to live in his society, and certainly not as a
clergyman,
if he does not hold to the orthodox line.
Ironically,
seeing
more unity than is officially allowed will place him into
a form
of excommunication, which will separate him from those
closest
to him instead of increasing the social oneness that is
implied
by a belief in pantheism.
6
Instead of blaming Coleridge for his
inability to resolve
this
problem, McFarland defines the problem as existing in the
nature
of things rather than in Coleridge himself:
Inability either really to accept or
wholeheartedly to reject
pantheism is the central truth of
Coleridge's philosophical
activity. . . . As with the dilemma of Hamlet, who, not
indecisive in himself, is confronted with
alternatives that
in themselves admit of no right solution,
so with the dilemma
of Coleridge: he could not resolve the
ambivalences of the
Pantheismusstreit
without diminishing one whole side of his
awareness and vital commitment. And so he bore the pain of
conflicting interests rather than choose
the anodyne of a
solution that did violence to the claims of
either side in
the conflict. <19>
Thus
McFarland agrees with Holmes in attributing courage to
Coleridge's
failure to reconcile opposites. Indeed,
in their
formulations,
Coleridge's refusal to let either side of the
opposition
win constitutes his admirable strength.
McFarland
thus
paints Coleridge as braver than most, able to bear almost
unbearable
tensions because of his principled refusal to
compromise.
Indeed, for all these writers who are
concerned with the
coincidence
of opposites, the question of whether the problem
exists
in the very nature of things is an important one.
Cusanus,
Pope, and Blake definitely believe that the coincidence
of
opposites is fundamental to the make-up of the universe and of
humanity. They assert that belief in various ways and
stand by
it. Coleridge, Mary Shelley, and Percy Shelley,
to varying
degrees,
want to believe in the coincidence of opposites, but
fail to
maintain and assert consistently and strongly their
vision
in that direction. McFarland defines the split in
Coleridge
as one between head and heart:
We are here interested in the emotional
attraction of
pantheism for Coleridge; on the rational level
his attitude
to pantheism is clear and unfailingly
censorious. <20>
In
"The Aeolian Harp" Coleridge reaches for pantheism in an
attempt
to obtain and reconcile all. Such a
reconciliation would
necessitate
the joining together of philosophical opposites.
Then he
finds himself also compelled, with just as much force and
in the
reverse direction (like his very description of the forces
of the
universe quoted above) to reject that wholeness.
Therefore
he finds himself caught in a higher coincidence of
opposites,
one that vacillates between accepting and rejecting
the
coincidence of opposites.
In his late, politically conservative work,
On the
Constitution
of Church and State, Coleridge combines his
philosophical
and religious ideas with political ones to propose
what he
calls the clerisy, a kind of mediating force made up of
the
intellectual estates of universities and schools in addition
to the
clergy, that would provide for the constructive balance of
opposites
in society:
Coleridge presented this national clerisy
as the great
reconciling and sustaining body within the
Constitution as a
whole, which would balance those forces of
permanency and
progression which are continuously in
conflict within the
nation. . . . The clerisy would be the dynamic centre of
renewal within national life, its object
'to secure and
improve that civilisation,
without which the nation could be
neither permanent nor progressive'. <21>
In that work, Coleridge makes a distinction
to clarify his
conception
of opposites. As with all these thinkers
into
7
opposites,
some terms take on great importance, while others seem
unimportant.
Permit me to draw your attention to the
essential difference
between opposite and contrary. Opposite powers are always of
the same kind, and tend to union, either by
equipoise or by a
common product. Thus the + and - poles of the magnet, thus
positive and negative electricity are
opposites. Sweet and
sour are opposites; sweet and bitter are
contraries. The
feminine character is opposed to the
masculine; but the
effeminate is its contrary. Even so in the present instance,
the interest of permanence is opposed to
that of
progressiveness; but so far from being
contrary interests,
they, like the magnetic forces suppose and
require each
other.
Even the most mobile of creatures, the serpent, makes
a rest of its own body, and drawing up its
voluminous train
from behind on this fulcrum, propels itself
onward. <22>
Barfield
dismisses this distinction:
The distinction between 'opposite' and
'contrary' made in . .
. Church and State . . . may, I think, be
ignored. In common
use both terms are taken to connote mutual
exclusion.
Coleridge was there apparently attempting
to 'desynonymise'
them by appropriating this connotation to
one of them
('contrary') only. The distinction however is not one that
he maintained. While, in the footnote, 'contrary' is made
virtually equivalent to 'contradictory,'
elsewhere it is not
infrequently synonymous with 'opposite.'
<23>
Similarly,
Blake asserts fundamental distinctions between
negations
and contraries, which Damrosch dismisses as
inconsequential. In Blake, "contrary" is the
favorable term:
everything
needs its contrary. In Coleridge
"opposite" is the
favorable
term: opposites tend to union. In Blake,
"negation" is
the
pejorative term. Negations try to cancel
out the forces they
feel
opposed to. In Coleridge
"contrary" is the pejorative term:
contraries
try to cancel each other out. Blake's negations are
defined
in terms of religious systems that try to impose their
reifications
onto others. Coleridge, however, simply
finds
logical
impossibility in certain statements of opposites:
Opposites, he well observes, are of two
kinds, either
logical, i.e. such as are absolutely
incompatible; or real
without being contradictory. The former he denominates Nihil
negativum irrepresentabile, [Engell's
footnote: "Nothing in a
negative sense, not representable"
(the logical opposite)--
i.e. the state of a body both at rest and
in motion, as
C[oleridge] goes
on to explain, following Kant] the connexion
of which produces nonsense. A body in motion is something--
Aliquid cogitabile; but a body, at one and the same time in
motion and not in motion, is nothing, or at
most, air
articulated into nonsense. But a motory force
of a body in
one direction, and an equal force of the
same body in an
opposite direction is not incompatible, and
the result,
namely rest, is real and representable. <24>
This distinction between opposites and
contraries, between
dynamism
and stasis, seems to haunt Coleridge's poetry.
In his
Dejection
Ode, Coleridge is at least in part answering his friend
William
Wordsworth's Intimations Ode, which wonders why childhood
bliss
disappears:
There was a time when meadow, grove,
and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled
in celestial light,
8
The glory and the freshness of a
dream.
. . .
Whither is it fled, the visionary
gleam,
Where is it now, the glory and the
dream?
Although
Coleridge's memory is not of such perfect bliss, he does
remember
something similar to Wordsworth's memory:
There was a time when . . .
. . .
hope grew round me, like the twining vine,
And fruits, and foliage, not my own,
seemed mine.
Coleridge
does not specifically recall the glow in Nature that
Wordsworth
recalls; he had only hope. Whereas
Wordsworth
directly
perceived something outside himself that gave him a
feeling
of warmth and joy, Coleridge's perception of joy outside
himself
was only a hope; even less than a hope, it only "seemed"
to grow
around, comfort, and belong to him.
Finally, Coleridge
receives
no reciprocity; he has to perform the whole task
himself:
I may not hope from outward forms to
win
The passion and the life, whose
fountains are within.
O Lady! we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does Nature live
Coleridge
sets himself the impossible task of virtually creating
Nature
by his own power. In that sense
"All Nature is but Art"
is an
impossibly heavy burden.
His metaphor of marriage with Nature makes
the herculean task
even
more painful:
Joy, Lady! is the spirit and the
power,
Which, wedding Nature to us, gives in
dower
A new Earth and new Heaven.
Although
the syntax becomes rather confusing, Coleridge here
makes
Joy the father of the bride. Only Joy
can give the dowry
of a
new Earth and new Heaven. But where does
that Joy come
from? It can come only from within the poet, who in
this
metaphor
is the bridegroom. Thus Coleridge sets
up a short-
circuit. Asking for a new Earth and a new Heaven from
outside,
he can
imagine it only as coming from within himself, just as
earlier
in the poem, when trying to receive joy from Nature, he
asserted
that he could receive only what he gave.
He has put
himself
in the impossible double position of groom and father of
the
bride! Therefore Coleridge is left with
an insoluble
dilemma,
which degenerates further into "Reality's dark dream."
By contrast, when Wordsworth tries to
answer the problem of
joy in
the last half of Intimations Ode, he constructs two
outside,
benevolent forces with which to interact, one in Nature
and one
in the idealism of Platonic metempsychosis.
He is
grateful
for obstinate questionings that give him an origin and a
goal
beyond Nature. While the homely Nurse
tries to keep him as
an
inmate, Wordsworth's babe escapes because of the Platonic
glory
from which he came. Even though
Wordsworth in remarks
outside
the Intimations Ode claimed that reincarnation was only a
hypothesis,
not his firm belief, the tone of the poem is strong
and
certain, not at all like Coleridge's doubts and hesitations.
Wordsworth
is able to thrust himself, by the willing suspension
of
disbelief, into a position that might not accord with his
Christian
orthodoxy, a move which, as we saw in "The Aeolian
Harp,"
Coleridge is not able to sustain.
9
Thus Coleridge's poem implies a kind of
stasis in the total
system
rather than a dynamic reciprocity. In
both "The Aeolian
Harp"
and the Dejection Ode, Coleridge does not measure up to
Wordsworth's
dynamic recreation of the dead-ends of perception.
Instead
of setting up a reciprocal system, Coleridge thinks that
glory
can arise only from within. By putting
the whole burden on
himself,
Coleridge remains in stasis, unable to move because he
doesn't
really seem to believe in a corresponding outside
opposite. He has put himself in a position perilously
close to
that of
the Alastor poet (see later chapter on Percy
Shelley),
who
ignores the outside world in preference to his solipsistic
musings. He can not therefore imagine the opposites of
self and
other
coming together, as do Blake and Shelley.
His philosophical theory finally does not
fully enter his
poetry. Wordsworth's tentative hypothesis strongly
invests the
Intimations
Ode (and "Tintern Abbey") but Coleridge's strongly
held
belief remains tentative and hesitant in "The Aeolian Harp"
and the
Dejection Ode.
Like Cusanus, Coleridge begins his whole
system with opposite
forces:
Now the transcendental philosophy demands;
first, that two
forces should be conceived which counteract
each other by
their essential nature; not only not in
consequence of the
accidental direction of each, but as prior
to all direction,
nay, as the primary forces from which the
conditions of all
possible directions are derivative and
deducible: secondly,
that these forces should be assumed to be
both alike
infinite, both alike indestructible. The problem will then
be to discover the result or product of two
such forces, as
distinguished from the result of those
forces which are
finite, and derive their difference solely
from the
circumstance of their direction. When we have formed a
scheme or outline of these two different
kinds of force, and
of their different results by the process
of discursive
reasoning, it will then remain for us to
elevate the Thesis
from notional to actual, by contemplating
intuitively this
one power with its two inherent
indestructible yet counter-
acting forces, and the results or
generations to which their
interpenetration gives existence, in the
living principle and
in the process of our own self-consciousness. <25>
But it
is this movement of the coincidence of opposites "from the
notional
to the actual" that Coleridge does not achieve in his
poetry. Like Cusanus and like Pope, his reasoning
from what he
knows
seems to hold him back. Blake's method
of rejecting Reason
as a
method and going straight to intuition penetrates that
limit. As long as we reason only from what we know,
we are
limited
because, as Blake emphasizes in "There is No Natural
Religion,"
we start with certain pre-conceived definitions of
what is
avaiable to our perception. Perceiving more than
empiricism
allows and thus refusing to allow the limits of
empiricism
and reason to control us, we can perceive miracles
through
expanded perceptions. Empiricism, like
any deadening,
abstract
system, tells that we do not have the experiences that
we have
because they do not fit the official system.
Coleridge's famous definition of the
Imagination does try to
bring
together the divine and the human, even while it
distinguishes
between them:
The IMAGINATION then I consider either as
primary, or
secondary. The primary IMAGINATION I hold
to be the living
Power and prime Agent of all human
Perception, and as a
repetition the finite mind of the eternal
act of creation in
the infinite I AM. The secondary I consider as an echo of
the former, co-existing with the conscious
will, yet still as
identical with the primary in the kind of
its agency, and
differing only in degree, and in the mode
of its operation.
10
It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in
order to re-create; or
where this process is rendered impossible,
yet still at all
events it struggles to idealize and to
unify. It is
essentially vital, even as all objects (as
objects) are
essentially fixed and dead.
FANCY, on the contrary, has no other
counters to play
with, but fixities and definites. The Fancy is indeed no
other than a mode of Memory emancipated
from the order of
time and space; and blended with, and
modified by that
empirical phaenomenon
of the will, which we express by the
word CHOICE. But equally with the ordinary memory it must
receive all its materials ready made from
the law of
association. <26>
First,
Coleridge defines the human imagination as a repetition of
the
divine mind, not as an identical force, as will Blake.
Second,
although he claims that the secondary imagination is
"identical
with the primary," he clearly gives it a lesser place
not
only by the denomination "secondary," but also by saying that
it
differs in degree from the primary. It
is clearly lesser on
some
kind of measurable scale. But the
greatest diminishment in
the
definition comes when, after defining the secondary
imagination
as having the power to re-create, he immediately
qualifies
the marvelous power with a resounding, discouraging,
"where
this process is rendered impossible."
So, after being
relegated
to a lower level in the scale of imaginations (but soon
to be
reassured by hearing that the fancy is even lower), the
secondary
imagination must find frequent frustration, of the kind
that we
have seen in "The Aeolian Harp."
Struggling to idealize
and to
unify in that poem, Coleridge found himself forced to
recant. And now in his definition of the marvelous
power of the
creative
imagination, he finds himself forced to qualify to the
point
of frustration.
In her study of the imagination, Mary
Warnock defines
Coleridge's
concept in very strong and constructive terms:
something working actively from within to
enable us to
perceive the general in the particular, to
make us treat the