Theory of Life: Coleridge

"I do not entertain the least doubt," says Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "that the true idea of Life existed in the mind of John Hunter." But, he continues, its expression is wanting in "logical arrangement" by which "fully to unfold and arrange it in distinct, clear, and communicable conceptions." This is the deficiency he promises to correct in his Hints Towards the Formation of a More Comprehensive Theory of Life (1848), a work which has been called a key to understanding the relationship between Romantic literature and science.

For Coleridge, nature evolves towards a purpose, and that is the unfolding of the human mind and consciousness in all its levels and degrees. It is a function of the law of creation itself: that of increasing individuation of an original unity. As he states, "without assigning to nature as nature, a conscious purpose" we must still "distinguish her agency from a blind and lifeless mechanism." He argues for a productive power that is above sense experience (that is, supersensible), but not supernatural, and thus not "occult."

Coleridge's work and thought are practically synonymous with the Romantic period. According to John Stuart Mill, "The name of Coleridge is one of the few English names of our time which are likely to be oftener pronounced, and to become symbolical of more important things, in proportion as the inward workings of the age manifest themselves more and more in outward facts. Bentham excepted, no Enghshman of recent date has left his impress so deeply in the opinions and mental tendencies of those among us who attempt to enlighten their practice by philosophical meditation."

Hints Towards the Formation of a More Comprehensive Theory of Life ~80pp:

• Kindle
• Google books
• Gutenberg

Extracts:

• "Who had the selection of these books, I do not know, but some of them must have been selected by our Chaplain, who so pranced on Coleridge’s “High German horse.”" (White-Jacket, 61)
• "It was unsafe to meddle with the corpses and ghosts of these creatures. A sort of generic or Pantheistic vitality seemed to lurk in their very joints and bones, after what might be called the individual life had departed." (Moby-Dick, 66 )
• "For example, he had not concluded, with the visionaries among the metaphysicians, that between the finer mechanic forces and the ruder animal vitality some germ of correspondence might prove discoverable." ("The Bell-Tower")
• "...though by natural processes, lifeless natures taken as nutriment become vitalized, yet is a lifeless nature, under any circumstances, capable of a living transmission, with all its qualities as a lifeless nature unchanged?" (The Confidence-Man, 16)

This meetup is part of a series on Muses and Monsters.