PAGE 242 1. 9. we feel no right to demand it. Cp. Kant, ib. p. 217, § 7. Kant says that in questions of taste, 'We do not merely count upon the coincidence of others in our judgment, but demand (fordern) it of them.' But, as he states elsewhere (p. 243, § 19), this demand is conditional. PAGE 243 1. 7. The GOOD consists. Cp. Kant, ib. p. 211, § 4. 10. it is always discursive. Coleridge means that it is consciously referred to a conception previously existing in the mind. See Kritik, ib. and p. 218: The good is only represented through the medium of a conception (Begriff) as the object of universal approval, which is the case neither with the pleasant nor with the beautiful.' 11. The Beautiful arises. This final definition of beauty is entirely in the sense of the Kritik. (See Kritik, Einleitung, vii, pp. 197-8: § xxxv, pp. 221, 294, &c.) Like Kant, Coleridge confines himself here to a subjective definition. 14. it is always intuitive. Or, as Kant would say, ohne Begriff. 18. Kaλóv quasi Kaλoûv. Coleridge's etymology is ingenious, but without foundation. APPENDIX PAGE 244 1. 4. Van Huysun. Justus, Dutch painter (16591716). See T. T., July 6, 1833. 17. the cruel and cowardly panther. These illustrations show how far Coleridge is from connecting Beauty with expression. 20. our perception of the fitness of the means. Coleridge is here combating the view which connects beauty with utility, and which is itself an offshoot of the theory of association. Here, too, he follows Kant. See the Kr. der Urt., §§ 10, 11 (pp. 224 foll.); and cp. Hume, Essays, ii. 227 (Green and Grose), Ideas of utility, though they do not entirely determine what is handsome or deformed, are evidently the source of a considerable part of our approbation or dislike.' PAGE 245 1. 2. The shell, &c. Coleridge's examples are singularly unfortunate. It is evident that the law of association can only operate where the facts are well known and have been constantly reflected upon. But how many of us even know that the pearl of the oyster, or the moss of the Moss Rose, is a disease? 15. is always accompanied, &c. This is doubtful. We may be pleased by proportion in an object and yet not conscious, till we come to analyse it, what the cause of our pleasure was. 29. From Coleridge's poem Lewti (1798). PAGE 246 l. 16. waiting for a loftier mood. A similar reason (not wholly complimentary to his readers) is given by Coleridge for breaking off in the discussion of memory in Biog. Lit. i. vii. p. 8o. The same quotation from Plotinus, in a more corrected form, occurs there also. It is taken from Ennead, i. vi. 489, where Plotinus makes a similar transition to the supersensual beauty. FRAGMENT OF AN ESSAY ON TASTE This essay was first printed in Literary Remains, vol. i, 1836. Its standpoint, like that of the previous essays, is Kantean. It is worthy of notice that in his‘Essay on the Standard of Taste' (1770) ► Hume had already contended for a universal principle of aesthetic judgement. PAGE 247 1. 14. the analysis of our senses. With this paragraph should be compared Kant's distinction (Werke, v. 210) of the two senses of the word Empfindung (sensation), e. g. The green hue of the grass makes part of objective sensation, as the perception of an object of the senses: but its agreeableness makes part of a subjective sensation, which does not include any presentation of an object. PAGE 249 1.4. does not. . . involuntarily claim. Cp. p. 246, 1.8 and note. 23. those parts of our nature, &c. Cp. the Kr. der Urt., §§ 18-22, on the 'Modality of aesthetic enjoyment', and §§ 56, 7, on the 'Antinomy of Taste'. The principle on which the judgement of taste is founded Kant names a Gemeinsinn' (common or universal sense), by which name, however, he does not imply that it is founded in the sensuous side of our nature. The sense-element is merely the feeling of pleasure attendant on the activity of the " Gemeinsinn'. In the Essay Supplementary to the Preface (1815) Wordsworth deplores the employment of the word 'Taste' to denote aesthetic appreciation. Proportion and congruity,' he remarks, 'are subjects upon which taste may be trusted: it is competent to this office for in its intercourse with these the mind is passive, and is affected painfully or pleasurably as by an instinct. But the profound and the exquisite in feeling, the lofty and universal in thought, and imagination; or, in ordinary language, the pathetic and sublime are neither of them, accurately speaking, objects of a faculty which could never, without a sinking in the spirit of Nations, have been designated by the metaphor-Taste. And why? Because without the exertion of a co-operative power in the mind of the Reader, there can be no adequate sympathy with either of these emotions without this auxiliary impulse elevated or profound passion cannot exist.' FRAGMENT OF AN ESSAY ON BEAUTY Also from vol. i. of the Remains. PAGE 250 1.6. endeavouring to recollect a name. For this illustration cp. Biog. Lit. i. 85 and note; On Thinking and Reflection (Miscellanies, p. 252). 13. as when, on passing out of a crowded city. Cp. A. P. 1802 (p. 25): The first sight of green fields and the numberless nodding gold-cups and the winding river with alders on its banks, affected me, coming up of a city confinement with the sweetness and power of a sudden strain of music.' This passage raises interesting questions in view of the distinction of fancy and imagination. As an illustration of the universal association of motion with the functions and passions of life,' Coleridge, as we see, adduces the Dryads and Hamadryads of Greek mythology. Now this mode of interpreting Nature he has elsewhere characterized (Letters, p. 405) as the work of fancy. Yet, as we see from the analysis of genius in Biog. Lit. ii. 17, and from the examples there given, imagination also works on the suggestion of these universal, necessary associations, 'the language of nature'; whereas of fancy it is characteristic to seize upon incidental and arbitrary resemblances. (See e. g. T. T. 1833: Fancy brings together images which have no connection natural or moral; are yoked by the poet by means of some accidental coincidence.') The solution of the difficulty is perhaps this-that both fancy and imagination may work upon the same universal and natural associations, but that they differ in the use which is made of them. It is not enough to catch the suggestions of human emotion in natural objects: the poet must really, by virtue of his imaginative power, invest the objects with this emotion, and so persuade us of the sympathy of nature with man. This the Greeks, with their Naiads and Hamadryads, had failed to do: nor is it effected by such images as that of the kingcups, nodding their heads and dancing in the breeze.' For in these we remain aware that the resemblance is, after all, external. And nothing, perhaps, better illustrates the limited conception of Beauty which even this Essay displays than that the significance of forms should be here confined to an expressiveness based upon external associations, the perception of which makes no demand upon the imagination. PAGE 252 1. 5. the disinterestedness of all taste. Coleridge means that we have no interest in the real existence of the viands, as the gourmand would have. But the gourmand would be equally indifferent to the appearance of the table, as a picture or repre sentation. An interest is present in both cases, but there is a difference in the direction which each takes. 8. How far it is a real preference. This sentence and the rest of the essay are not very clear; but a doubt seems to have arisen in Coleridge's mind as to the justice of his original definition of the end of art as pleasure. The principle of his dictum concerning the pleasure which attends right conduct is equally applicable to artistic creation and enjoyment. And if pleasure be not our aim in seeking beautiful things, neither will the artist's aim, in creating them, be to minister to our pleasure. 32. For the argumentum in circulo cp. Biog. Lit. i. 216, l. 20. ON POESY OR ART Originally printed in vol. i. of Literary Remains, where it forms Lecture XIII of the course of 1818. As is pointed out by T. Ashe (Miscellanies, p. 87) the editor of the Remains has included under the heading of Lectures much material that never formed a part of them; and of the present paper it seems uncertain whether it was actually delivered as one of the lectures, or written at another time. In any case 1818 is the earliest date to which the inward evidence would allow us to assign it. It is certainly more mature than the fragmentary 'Essay on Beauty', which belongs to that year, and shows the influence of Schelling, who here too has assisted Coleridge to emancipate himself from Kantean limitations. The close resemblance of many parts of the Essay to Schelling's Oration On the relation of the Formative Arts to Nature has been fully pointed out by Sara Coleridge, in the Appendix to her edition of Notes and Lectures (1819), and illustrated by a translation of the most striking parallel passages. It is well to compare Sara Coleridge's comment that for the most part the thoughts of Schelling are mixed up with those of the borrower', with the statement in the Introduction to the Remains that 'in many of the books and papers which have been used in the compilation of these volumes, passages from other writers noted down by Mr. Coleridge as in some way remarkable, were mixed up with his own comments on such subjects in a manner very embarrassing to the eye of a third person undertaking to select the original matter after the lapse of several years'. It is not improbable that Coleridge himself, when he came to throw his notes into a connected form, found the same difficulty in discriminating the meum and tuum. I have given what seem to me the most noteworthy references: but the reader should study the oration itself to determine whether or not he can subscribe to the opinion of Sara Coleridge, that 'if it be Schelling's-and that the leading thought of it is his, I freely admit—it is Coleridge's also'. The sixth 'Haupt-Abschnitt' of the Transcendentaler Idealismus (Werke, iii. 612-29) may also be compared. PAGE 254 1. 4. passion itself imitates order. Compare with this Wordsworth's account of metre, Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800: L. B. p. 383) and Coleridge's own account in Biog. Lit. ii. 49 ff. 33. art might be defined. Cp. Schelling's Oration (Werke, ed. 1860, ii. 292): Plastic Art therefore evidently stands as an active bond between the soul and Nature, and can only be grasped in the vital medium between both.' Cp. Schelling, ib. p. 292. PAGE 255 1. 12. muta poesis. fullest statement of the true nature of artistic imitation and artistic PAGE 256 1. 15. Why are such simulations, &c. To a similar question Schelling (ib. p. 302) answers, 'Because the Thought (Begriff) is that which alone is living in the objects.' 33. We must imitate Nature, &c. Cp. Schelling, ib. p. 294, and Plotinus, quoted in note to p. 255, l. 32 supra. PAGE 257 1. 2. the union of the shapely with the vital. Cp. with Coleridge's former definition of Beauty (On the Principles of genial Criticism', p. 234) as 'the shapely joined with the agreeable '. The change is significant. But even this definition is unsatisfactory, inasmuch as it merely posits the union of two distinct elements, without really uniting them. Yet is not the essential interdependence of form and life the leading thought of the whole essay? 19. If he proceeds only from a given form. We see that Coleridge has quite abandoned his earlier standpoint. 27. the thought and the product are one. Cp. Schelling, ib. p. 299: 'The science by which Nature works, is certainly of another kind from human science, which is combined with self-conscious reflection; in Nature the conception is not separated from the deed, nor the design from the execution.' 31. In the objects of nature are presented. Cp. Coleridge's Theory of Life, passim, especially pp. 423, 424 (Miscellanies). PAGE 258 1. 11. In every work of art, &c. Cp. Schelling, ib. p. 300. Cp. also Transc. Ideal., 6ter Haupt-Abschnitt. 19. the artist must first eloign himself. Ib. p. 301: 'He (the 1 |