ABSTRACT
The study of this wrenching, of the translation of imaginative acts into doctrines, is that mode of tracing the source of philosophy in 'facts of mind', which, in Coleridge's view of 1801, was to make the theory of poetry 'supersede all the books of metaphysics and all the books of morals too'. Coleridge, have suggested, very soon left the theory of poetry to become metaphysician and moralist. Two doctrines in particular concerning the intercourse of the mind with Nature, the doctrines alluded in Chapter have distracted attention from his conception of the poetic activity. The two doctrines can be stated as follows: The mind of the poet at moments, penetrating 'the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude', gains an insight into reality, reads Nature as a symbol of something behind or within Nature not ordinarily perceived. The mind of the poet creates a Nature into which his own feelings, his aspirations and apprehensions, are projected.
