Biographia Literaria

For Coleridge, as for philosophers since Plato, perception is intrinsic to fathoming human life. As Edmund Burke wrote:

“The mind of man possesses a sort of creative power on its own; either in representing at pleasure the images of things in the order and manner in which they were received by the senses, or in combining those images in a new manner, and according to a different order. This power is called imagination.” (Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. 1757.)

Though in the conclusion of Biographia Literaria Coleridge resists being associated with metaphysics, he praises Wordsworth’s “mysticism” and admits that “metaphysics and psychology have long been my hobby horse” (29). It is this interest in something akin to what Locke termed “introspection” that invests poetry with such importance for Coleridge. His famous vision in “Kubla Khan” of the poet being “drunk the milk of paradise” similarly suggests an intimate connection between the divine, ultimate reality, and poetry. The Christian God referenced in the conclusion as “an infinite yet self-conscious creator” noticeably takes the form of a poet (72).

For Coleridge, imagination referred to consciousness as a plastic function essential to the perception of reality.