Background
European thought had come through the scientific revolution concerning heaven (astronomy) and earth (physics), and emerged, full of optimism about man's power of cognition, into the Age of Reason or Enlightenment. In facing the mystery of life itself, researchers first sought to apply the method that had worked so effectively for inertial nature to the realm of vital nature. In this approach Man himself was seen as a static entity and a tabula rasa, onto which was written sense-experience, considered as the source of all knowledge. Thus, life and knowledge were increasingly regarded from a mechanical and materialistic perspective. As William Godwin stated succinctly about the age, "the human mind… is nothing but a faculty of perception," that all knowledge "comes from impression," and the mind starts with "absolute ignorance." (Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, 1793) However, this approach faced a problem: the experience of a split between subject (man as experiencing) and object (the thing being experienced), the inner world of the mind and the outer world of things. This very real experience created a growing unease and doubt in Western philosophy regarding the reliability of sense-experience as the basis for knowledge: did what was perceived bear any true relationship to what was or was perception simply at best a representation of reality and at worst an illusion. The epistemological dilemma arising from man's existential reality eventuated in two positions - materialism and idealism. The materialism of Hobbes elevated matter, and the sense-experience of matter, to the level of sole reality, life being but an epiphenomenon. The contrary position of Hume was that the only reality man could be certain of was his inner experience of thought so that reality was not object-ive (things outside of us), but a creation of the mind. The materialist position was combatted initially by the works of the Cambridge Platonists, notably More and Cudworth, who set out to show how Nature, Man and the Divine were connected through a 'plastic power' that was accessible to the mind if it were approached rightly. :Cudworth had challenged the rising tide of empiricism in his day by asserting that the universe was not (as Hobbes and others believed) composed merely of inert material atoms governed by mechanical laws; rather, the natural world was symbolic of a transcendent reality that lay beyond material appearances. The idealist position was challenged by the Common Sense Philosophy of Thomas Reid. The German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, whose ancestors came from the same part of Scotland as Reid, set out to rescue scientific knowledge from the idealism of Hume. While his critical analysis set the foundation for a more rigorous philosophy and science, his solution to idealism was to accept Hume's limits to human knowledge as well as the idea of a transcendent reality, but then to assert the legitimacy of natural science in delineating the reality of sense-experience, and to operate 'as if' what one perceived was indeed reality, an approach that served to 'save the appearances'.Central role of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Romanticism was inspired by Kant's critical approach to the problem of knowledge, but rejected his limits to that knowledge, seeing it as confining the science of vital nature to the materialist approach, making life an epiphenomenon of "the chance whirlings of unproductive particles" as Coleridge put it succinctly. There was a profound feeling that a new epistemology, or 'science of knowledge' was needed to deal with the question of vital nature and the nature of life itself. Art, and in particular poetry, provided a vehicle to explore vital nature and to get to its essence, but for it to be scientific required an epistemological foundation. The central figure in the development of this epistemology was Samuel Taylor Coleridge (along with J.W. von Goethe in Germany); this was recognized in his time, after his time and even most recently. : Certainly he stood athwart his age in many respects…and not least his seminal presence in the more ordered oeuvres of his friends and critics…continues to grow. : ...he was so seminal a thinker that his insights and apercus tend to "sprout in the brains" with a fertility that is positively dangerous. : The influence of Coleridge, like that of Bentham, extends far beyond those who share in the peculiarities of his religious or philosophical creed. He has been the great awakener in this country of the spirit of philosophy, within the bounds of traditional opinions. He has been, almost as truly as Bentham, 'the great questioner of things established'; for a questioner needs not necessarily be an enemy. (John Stuart Mill, in ''Coleridge'', 1840) Coleridge was strongly influenced in his initial study of philosophy by Kant, but also from the re-introduction of Platonic thought via the Cambridge Platonists, particularly the discovery of Cudworth's history of thought ill, Introduction and the ideas of Plotinus and neo-Platonism, not to mention the common sense philosophy of Thomas Reid. The view of the mind as passive was challenged, as it seemed to leave no room for creativity and individuality. His own experience of creative powers of the mind, as experienced in and through poetry in particular, led him to seek out the role of imagination in human thought, and necessarily to distinguish it from fancy.Role of imagination
The meeting with Wordsworth in 1795 marked a turning point in Coleridge's thinking about thinking. In Wordsworth, Coleridge found a congenial mind, one that helped to foster the "innate platonising quality" of his mind. This collaboration led to an enhancement of his own poetic creativity and the growth of his critical faculty. : If Coleridge plunged impulsively into the Rubicon in 1795, it is equally clear that he emerged on the further shore in the late summer of 1802 and advanced directly on Rome with confidence and a firmly defined sense of mission. Coleridge went to Germany with Wordsworth in 1798-99, learned German and became more acquainted with German philosophy, both the Kantian stream and German Idealism (Fichte, Schelling). Coleridge came to realize that the mind was not an associative faculty governed by blind, mechanical laws, as Hartley's doctrine of mechanical association presented it, but rather was essentially a product of a creative shaping power (imagination) that ruled perception and governed our mentation but could also in its higher form be used to create new "things", resulting in the evolution of consciousness and mind itself. Coleridge distinguished between imagination and fancy, which only fabricated illusions. For Coleridge, the creative capacity of the imagination, the "prime agent of all human perception," was the key to connecting to the essence of things outside of ourselves and overcoming the apparent split between self and object occasioned by man's self-consciousness. The driving force of that connection and the activation of the creative imagination to get at the inherent essence of external objects was love, a deep desire to know other than ourselves. As Dorothy Emmet (1952) noted, the entire basis of Coleridge's new approach to knowing nature was that "we should be able not only to look, but to love as we look" making philosophy and science a romantic endeavour.Relation of matter and sense-experience to reality
For Coleridge, Western philosophy was intellect-bound and driven, containing no power of creative imagination, such as could be discerned in the Greek term ''Dual basis for the epistemology of life
Coleridge based his epistemology on two facts of experience: that of self (I AM) and that of a world co-connected with self. Our being is something we can know intuitively and certainly, but the existence of things outside is less certain and subject to doubt, unless one acknowledges that a world outside is 'not only coherent but identical, and one and the same thing with our own immediate self-consciousness', that is, that the experience of things without is a function of our experience of self. If we use only the intellect, we separate things that are not in reality separated, and this then gives only a knowledge of the outer appearances (Bacon's ''natura naturata)'', termed in German, ''Wissen'', known as natural science (''Natur-Wissenschaft''). Upon irradiation from the noetic (from Greek ''nous'') ideational capacity, however, this natural science of inert nature then becomes a useful means to render rational and analytical (therefore public knowledge or science) what is otherwise experienced only internally as a private ('subjective') knowledge. The presupposition of material science of an objective world 'out there' separate from us that causes sense-experience and is then responsible for our thoughts and feelings is replaced for Coleridge by 'the truest and most binding realism' that is grounded in a "coeducation" between subject and object, mediated by the creative imagination, a very real power of mind that reunites in 'the human mind above nature', what is always united, but only separate by a 'prejudice of our mind' due to our self-consciousness arising out of the self-awareness created by the mental capacity (Latin mens). Coleridge's “true and original realism” accepts that the object perceived is itself real and not an illusion of the mind, as Hume and Kant would have it, but also that 'an object is inconceivable without a subject as its antithesis. ''Omen perceptum percipientum supponit'' verything perceived supposes a perceiver' At the same time, the underlying principle of this realism can be neither subject or object, but that which unites the two, and this is a self-consciousness presence of mind ('self-consciousness is not a kind of being, but a kind of knowing' - ''Biographia Literaria'') :Thesis VI: This principle, and so characterised manifests itself in the SUM or I AM; which I shall hereafter indiscriminately express by the words spirit, self, and self-consciousness. In this, and in this alone, object and subject, being and knowing, are identical, each involving and supposing the other. In other words, it is a subject which becomes a subject by the act of constructing itself objectively to itself; but which never is an object except for itself, and only so far as by the very same act it becomes a subject. Sense-experience for Coleridge does not cause mind but is a means of revealing and evolving mind. As a result, being and thinking are not related as cause to effect, but as co-determinant. “... the principium essendi does not stand to the principlum cognoscende in the relation of cause to effect, but both the one and the other are co-inherent and identical.” (''Biographia Literaria'') Self-conscious, being a self-contained principle, can then be made into a pure thought, containing a polarity, "with two opposite and counteracting forces," which is the minimum needed for motion (“life”), that then leads to self-discovery and "the fullness of the human intelligence." (''Biographia Literaria'') :If the intelligent faculty should be rendered more comprehensive, it would require only a different and apportioned organization–the body celestial instead of the body terrestrial–to bring before every human soul the collective experience of its whole past existence. (''Biographia Literaria'')Method
The means by which philosophy, or the general principles for seeking knowledge, is rendered into actual knowledge or science is “method.” Method involves the considered, thoughtful arrangement of parts that reflects the inner essence of things (association by continuity), and not simply their apparent association in space and time (association by contiguity). This involves a "preconception" a "leading Thought" - Bacon's 'forethoughtful inquiry' or 'dry light' (lumens siccum) - and a"progressive transition" not "a mere dead arrangement." :But as, without continuous transition, there can be no Method, so without a preconception there can be no transition with continuity. The term, Method cannot therefore, otherwise than by abuse, be applied to a mere dead arrangement, containing in itself no principle of progression. Coleridge uses the example of electricity which had been known as an empirical fact for centuries, but it was not until science took on the organizing Idea of polarity (out of the genius of mind that derived this from the “given” of the world order), that rapid progress was made in revealing the nature and governing laws of this fact of nature. This is in contrast to magnetism, also known for centuries, but still 'unknown' scientifically in his day as being still without an organizing Idea. :The naturalist, who cannot or will not see, that one fact is often worth a thousand (the important consideration so often dwelt upon, so forcibly urged, so powerfully amplified and explained by our great countryman Bacon), as including them all in itself, and that it first makes all the others facts; who has not the head to comprehend, the soul to reverence, a central experiment or observation (what the Greeks would perhaps have called a protophenomenon)–; will never receive an auspicious answer from the oracle of nature. The fact of a relationship of parts to wholes derives from man's inherent experience of himself as apart from nature and yet somehow connected with it, “the instinct, in which humanity itself is grounded: that by which, in every act of conscious perception, we at once identify our being with that of the world without us, and yet place ourselves in contradistinction to that world.” :The arrangement of parts must be into a consciously perceived real whole where the whole is in each of the parts (though some parts may contain more of the whole), and is not merely the sum of the parts (mechanism) or even greater or above the parts (mysticism). Arranging the parts into their governing whole involves two forms of ordering or relations: ordination, or the hierarchicial arrangement of discoveries using the 'leading Thought" such as in medicine, physics and chemistry, and "LAW", which is the correlative to the Platonic 'IDEA', In other words, Idea and Law are the Subjective and Objective Poles of the same Magnet i.e. of the same living and energizing Reason isdom What is an Idea in the Subject, i.e. in the Mind, is a Law in the Object, i.e. in Nature. (from a letter by Coleridge of 23 June 1829) Both determine the relation of the parts to the whole, and create the governing 'truth originating in the oeticmind, and not abstracted or generalized from observation of the parts." There is divine or spiritual LAW and Natural Law, and between these two lies the laws governing human culture or the arts, for every work of the genius of man contains 'a necessary predominance of the Ideas (i.e. of that which originates in the artist himself), and a comparative indifference of the materials'. The goal of philosophy is to make systematic and conscious that which otherwise happens naturally, but unconsciously, namely access to the higher realm of Idea and Law (what Coleridge termed revelation), so as to then unfold through reason the various principles of application. :Deep Thinking is attainable only by a man of deep Feeling, and all Truth is a species of Revelation." The development and progression of mind and consciousness from and to this realm of what the Greeks termed wisdom (philosophy being the systematic means of bringing wisdom from the Superconscious Mind ("The vision and the faculty divine") and individual sub-consciousness into the conscious mind) is what Coleridge terms “Method.” From this Coleridge is led to conclude that there is a functional polarity: the productive power (''dynamis''), "which acts in nature as nature, is essentially one…with…the intelligence, which is in the human mind above nature." (BL) Given this “self-organising” power in nature, form then follows function, or form is developed not from without, but from within. While developing and once developed, it can be influenced from without (stimuli), but its formative forces lie within and work outward. The correlative of this is “that as the forms in all organized existence, so must all true and living knowledge proceed from within.” Knowledge is a proper exercise of mind, not the blind, mechanical collation of data along some presumed criteria for ordering. As Coleridge wrote of Bacon, who he saw as misunderstood and misinterpreted, "the truths which have their signatures in nature, and which (as he himself plainly and often asserts) may indeed be revealed to us through and with, but never by the senses, or the faculty of sense." Thus, the role of mind becomes paramount. Where in Nature there are laws to keep everything in harmonious, dynamic whole, powered by a blind force (living principle), there must also be a similar force, but rational in essence, that works on and in man, what the Greeks termed theTheory of life
Man, being his own ground and starting point, (the scriptural I AM in that I AM or YHWH) is then confronted with the mystery of life. There is an apparent chain of being from the lowliest form of biological life to the highest. The highest is man himself, the one with the unique capability for self-awareness and self-reflection, thinking about things and even thinking about thinking, the highest form. It is also obvious that there are different kinds as well as degrees, seen in the distinction between minerals and animals, and between these two kingdoms and the plant kingdom. In the latter distinction, there also generally is seen the presence or absence of life. Matter, in the mineral form, is not dead, but what Saumarez termed "common matter," whereas plants and animals involve "living matter." This is what Coleridge terms “life biological” as for him, there is life in all of creation, life consisting of a dynamic polarity of forces, that is both inherent in the world as potential and acting inherently in all manifestation: "Thus, then, Life itself is not a thing—a self-subsistent hypostasis—but an act and process..". (''Biographia Literaria'') This dynamic polarity produces motion, acts throughout all of creation, and via the power of the creative imagination, leads to the evolution of mind and consciousness. And the direction of this motion of the universe is towards increasing individuation, though there is also equal and opposite tendency of connection, the interaction of which leads to higher and higher individuation, "the one great end of Nature, her ultimate object."(''Biographia Literaria'') This productive or generative power of life ( Blumenbach's ''Bildungstrieb''- Coleridge sat in on his lectures during his visit to Germany) exists in all manifestations of life. These manifestations are the finite product of the dynamic interaction of infinite and non-destructible forces, but its "productive energy is not extinguished in this product, but overflows, or is effluent…as the function of the body." (BL). Thus, the very nature of the “given” (IT IS) is contained in its manifestations such that the whole is contained in all the parts. Life, that is, the essential polarity in unity ('multeity in unity') in Coleridge's sense also has a four beat cycle, different from the arid dialectics of abstraction - namely the tension of the polar forces themselves, the charge of their synthesis, the discharge of their product (indifference) and the resting or 'gathering' state of this new form (predominance). The product is not a neutralization, but a new form, a new creation or emergent, of the essential forces, these forces remaining within, though now as the functions of the form. :But as little can we conceive the oneness, except as the mid-point producing itself on each side; that is, manifesting itself on two opposite poles. Thus, from identity we derive duality, and from both together we obtain polarity, synthesis, indifference, predominance. (''Biographia Literaria'') :To make it adequate, we must substitute the idea of positive production for that of rest, or mere neutralization. To the fancy alone it is the null-point, or zero, but to the reason it is the punctum saliens, and the power itself in its eminence. Matter, for Coleridge is the product of the dynamic forces - repulsion (centrifugal), and attraction (centripetal); it is not itself a productive power but a resultant. It is also forms the mass of a given body. The entire process of nature is this progressive unfolding of principle into matter, and then the increasing tendency to move inward that which was previously external, that is, to individuate forms. With Coleridge, there is also a four-fold or bi-polarity of powers, forces and energies represented by the cross. Each power has itself two poles. In ancient philosophy this bi-polarity was represented by the four element theory - air, water, fire and earth and more modernly by the four-fold composition of matter - carbon (earth), hydrogen (fire), oxygen (water) and nitrogen (air). This progressive unfolding of the initial dynamic principle into the dimensions of space and time leads to a trinity of 'life biological'. :My hypothesis will, therefore, be thus expressed, that the constituent forces of life in the human living body are—first, the power of length, or REPRODUCTION; second, the power of surface (that is, length and breadth), or IRRITABILITY; third, the power of depth, or SENSIBILITY. With this observation I may conclude these remarks, only reminding the reader that Life itself is neither of these separately, but the copula of all three… (Here we can also see the interchange between Schelling andMind and polarity of powers
The Mind is bipolar in that intellect and reason comprise the 'sense' and ''nous poeticos'' and ''nous patheticos'', the dual aspects of the ''nous'' itself, "the inmost nature" of mind. :The flux and reflux of the mind in all its subtlest thoughts and feelings…in its inmost nature - in modes of inmost being - the tremulous reciprocations of which propagate themselves even to the inmost of the soul. (''Biographia Literaria'') For Coleridge, the mind was an action, a power not a thing, ('the mind's self-experience in the act of thinking') and in this power there are two powers, active and passive, with the imagination functioning in-between.Imagination, desideration and polarity
Coleridge goes on to deal with this power of imagination that emerged from the third power of the passions - desideration. The emotions, if contemplated and “recollected in tranquility” produce objective, as opposed to subjective, feeling that can then be expressed aesthetically via symbols ( Suzanne Langer). The 'poetic' imagination is essentially projective, producing projective art works, whilst the philosophic imagination of Coleridge is evocative and is used to draw out the meaning and essence of the symbols already extant in our surroundings. And these objective feelings, being linked to reality and the over-riding super-sensible determinant of that reality, act powerfully within the forms of nature and culture. As was expressed in the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, "the power of the human imagination is sufficient to produce such changes even in our physical nature as might almost appear miraculous…" (This would point to the founder of the American New Thought movement,Imagination and understanding
Imagination is active and acts while “hovering between images,” and when it fixes on a given image, it then becomes understanding. Communication of these images of the understanding is what Coleridge terms 'noetic ideation'. “Communication by the symbolic use of the Understanding is the function of Queen Imagination on behalf of Noetic Ideation.” In contrast, fancy is static and idealising, creating nothing real, but it does, as Colerdige notes, provide a “drapery” for the body of thought. The power of imagination is evident in the relationship of reality between parts and whole, and the ability thereby to associate parts of the same whole (phenomenon) (association by contiguity) that are not ordinarily so associated in time and space (association by continuity), "the perception of similitude in dissimilitude" which "principle is the great spring of the activity of our minds, and their chief feeder." (Wordsworth's Preface to the Lyrical Ballads) Indeed, it is in the ability to see what is similar in what appears dissimilar, and what is dissimilar in what presents as similar (continuity) that resides the creative genius of a man. Art is an artificial arrangement, that is to say, not that of crude nature, but nature re-arranged is “re-presented” to the mind of man so that there is a condensed unity of parts in a given representation (compare Literature with History). It is not an illusion, but a re-creation of nature's innate unity, unconscious and promiscuous, into a new unity. : rtis a figurative language of thought, and is distinguished from nature by the unity of all the parts in one thought or idea... Hence nature itself would give us the impression of a work of art, if we could see the thought which is present at once in the whole and in every part; and a work of art will be just in proportion as it adequately conveys the thought, and rich in proportion to the variety of parts which it holds in unity. In re-presenting nature, the “poet” is not simply copying or distorting nature. But in order to do so, he "must master the essence, the ''natura naturans'', which presupposes a bond between nature in the higher sense and the soul of man" or human nature. The wisdom of nature, the primal wisdom, is in man in the form of the body; it is participative, unconscious and instantaneous (instinctual). The wisdom of man has to be produced, re-created and given a conscious value or appraisal. It needs to be made coadunative, compresent by an act of will through objective feeling and noetic ideation. In this regard, the body wisdom (Intellect
The intellect is "the faculty of suiting measures to circumstances," or "the faculty judging according to sense." Intellect is linked initially to fancy, such that their functioning forms a law by which man "is impelled to abstract the changes and outward relations of matter and to arrange them under the form of causes and effects." This law is necessary for man's awareness and freedom, but if not conjoined with a new participative capacity (the Goethean ''Gemüt'') would "prevent or greatly endanger man's development and progression." The intellect in man, as contrasted with animals, is the ability not only to obey rules, but to create them and to know what the term "rule" means. It is the possibility of sense experience. Sensation is "already intelligence in process of constructing itself." Thus, "intelligence is a self-development and sensation itself is but vision nascent, not the cause of intelligence, but intelligence itself revealed as an earlier power in the process of self-construction" working on the sense-data to provide names of objects and the relationships of their outer forms in terms of cause and effect (what Suzanne Langer terms 'figuration').Intellect and reason
The intellect also is to be distinguished from reason. The intellect, unirradiated by reason, is a faculty of the instinct, which man shares with the higher animals (cunning). It is subject to the physical laws of heredity, and the evolution from sense to passive understanding is an identical one in man and animal. In man, there is in addition its polar opposite, namely "active" intellect, which, in the form of conscious intent, is there in man all along as potential in contrast to the animal and forms the basis for criminal law (mens rea). The intellect is reactive as regards the sense pole and proactive as regards the pole of reason (the conceptual faculty). :For the ntellectis in all respects a medial and mediate faculty, and has therefore two extremities or poles, the sensual, in which form it is St. Paul's φρονημα σαρκος hronema sarkos - Romans 8., carnal mindand the intellectual pole, or the hemisphere (as it were) turned towards the reason. Reason essentially deals with principles and the intellect with concepts, both factual (physical) and functional (etheric). The noetic faculty deals with Ideas, which then are elaborated into principles by reason, whilst the intellect establishes concepts arranged using scalar logic (for ordination of facts) and polar logic (for functions). This provides a trinity of mind, wherein the intermediate faculty of imagination is the matrix connecting all of them. Reason is present in the whole process of nature, yet is accessible only to the intellect. It is responsible for the awakening process in human consciousness from unconsciousness, through sleeping and dreaming to waking. Coleridge understood an ascent of consciousness from sense perception, wherein reason lies as potential only (Sleeping Beauty) to the apprehension of reason itself. For Coleridge, intellect is "the faculty of rules" and reason "the source of principles." Intellect is the world of man, and human law, where the end can and often does justify the means. It is not the world of reason. It is the fact of reason's presence in nature that allows us to speak of it becoming apparent or "present to" the intellect, such that we have an ulterior consciousness that is behind the natural awareness (the "unconscious") of all animals, one that is self-reflective or "philosophic" though there is a purely 'mental' philosophy that Coleridge termed 'psilosophy' and that which involves also the noetic capacity of mind (the ''nous'' rather than just the ''mens'') which is true philosophy in the Greek sense of 'love of wisdom' — ''philia'' "love", ''sophia'' "wisdom." :Plants are Life dormant; Animals = Somnambulists; the mass of Mankind Day-dreamers; the Philosopher only awake. And this creates a functional identity between the philosophic imagination and instinct, as those who have the first, "...feel in their own spirits the same instinct, which impels the chrysallis of the horned fly to leave room in its involucrum for antennae yet to come. They know and feel that the potential works in them, even as the actual works on them." What renders the intellect human (that is, active) is precisely the ability to identify by naming (nominalism), that is, to abstract or generalize, for it is from this ability that we get the human ability of speech. And it is in speech or language that we first see this irradiation of the intellect by reason. Animals may generalize, but they do not name, they do not have the power ofReason and self-consciousness
Reason operating consciously in us through the imagination is the act of self-consciousness, the “I AM.” Reason, via the intellect also enables initially the mind's detachment from nature, creating 'subject' and 'object.' It provides for the power to behold polarities and indeed shows itself "out of the moulds of the understanding only in the disguise of two contradictory conceptions." To avoid being propelled into existential nihilsm, we then need to use the active side of reason ('productive unity'), such that reason is "the tendency at once to individuate and to connect, to detach, but so as either to retain or to reproduce attachment." To go from the indirect moonlight of mere intellect (mirrored through sense experience) to the direct sunlight of active understanding (irradiated by reason) is to go from exterior perception (of appearances) to a universal ulterior appercetion of phenomena (Theory of language
"Words are living powers, not merely articulated air." Language is to consciousness what geometry is to space and mathematics to time. It is language, not sense experience, that orients mind to reality. For Coleridge, language in its highest form, is the very tool and vehicle for understanding reality and the basis for the evolution of mind and consciousness. He takes as the foundation our immediate living experience of things ( Thomas Reid's Common Sense) as well as of our very self - the mind as dynamic act. Words, for Coleridge, reveal the creative mind, working via the power of imagination (versus the power of fancy) to reveal reality (not to create artifacts of experience). However, there is a difference between the popular, descriptive use of language, which "as objects are essentially fixed and dead," and the more serious discursive, scholarly use of language. Beyond that there is the 'best part of language', the language of disclosure, which discloses by the very use of precise, desynonimized terms. This 'disclosive' language emerges as a result of the cultivation of profound (objective) feeling ( Suzanne Langer), and deep thought (involving the inmost mind (nous), in both its nether (the ''nous patheticos'', or Goethe's Gemüt) and upper aspects (nous poieticos or Rudolf Steiner's Geist). Here, the full mind, both mental and noetic, not just the intellect and reason, is active in establishing the meaning of words. Disclosive language taps into and contains the 'fullness of intelligence', expressing living experience (''Erlebniss'' in German). This disclosive language is also one that evolves along with man's consciousness and the progress of science, in that terms come more and more to be desynonymized, such as the famous distinction Coleridge made between imagination and fancy and awareness and consciousness. Coleridge's view was in contrast to the predominant Lockean tradition: for Locke, static concepts and their verbal exponents arise from experience, whereas for Coleridge the proper use of language is a dynamic or romantic event between mind and nature. :Coleridge's definition of "word" represents language as participating intimately in the complex relation between mind and world" "Coleridge presents language as the principal vehicle for the interaction of the knowing mind and known reality. Thus, for Coleridge, language, that is, the different true forms of the one Logos, discloses to us the very content and activity of cognition, and that since 'mind is an act', language is the means for the evolution of mind and consciousness (Logos, the evolver). Initially, Coleridge focussed on poetry as the source of living experience in words, but later came to understand that poetry was 'essentially ideal" and that the poetic imagination 'struggles to idealize' and to "spread (project) a tone around forms, incidents and situations." One had to go beyond poetry and the poetic imagination, into the 'verbal imagination' to get at the true power of language to use "words that convey feelings and flash images" to disclose reality via the common ethereal element of our being. This involves a participative capacity of mind to create a dynamic between mind and word, so that the minds of the reader or listener and the writer or speaker create a co-adunation or compresence (Samuel Alexander). This capacity involves not just the abstracting Latin intellect (mens), but the re-emergent participative Greek ''nous''. Coleridge referred to this new capacity of mind, using the ''nous'' to irradiate the Latin ''mens'', as an 'ulterior consciousness'. And this capacity of mind to participate mind is an 'ethereal medium." Mind is at the very foundation of being of man and much more than the sum of sense experience, and the purpose of his method is "to render the mind intuitive of the spiritual on-sensiblein man" and develop "this ulterior consciousness". The medium of the compresence of minds ("spiritual intercourse") is "the common ethereal element of their being, the tremulous reciprocations remulationsof which propagate themselves even to the inmost of the soul." (BL) Language is both an expression and motive force for the evolution of consciousness; the history of words is a history of mind (seeRomantic cognosis
At the core of the idea of romanticism is romantic cognosis, or 'co-gnosis', the dynamic interplay of masculine and feminine forces and energies in the mind and imagination, involving a dyadic unit of consciousness right from the beginning (Genesis: 'male and female made he them'). Coleridge speaks of "the feminine mind and imagination," and provides the polaric example of the two giants of English literature, Shakespeare ("darts himself forth and passes into all the forms of human character and passion") and Milton ("attracts all forms and things to himself" which "shape themselves anew" in him). For Coleridge, "imagination is both active and passive", that is, masculine and feminine in nature. He also provides a similar polarity between the essentially passive primary imagination, that (spontaneously, reactively) configures sensory experience ("a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM"), and the active secondary imagination that 'dissolves, diffuses and dissipates in order to re-create' via the higher state of mind and consciousness. Coleridge also distinguished between the poetic imagination, which is essentially projective, and the philosophic imagination, which is essentially pro-active ("the scared power of self-intuition,See also
*References
{{Samuel Taylor Coleridge Romanticism Epistemology