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precision cannot be fairly conceded to him. For the objects of any two ideas need not have co-existed in

8 I here use the word idea in Mr. Hume's sense on account of its general currency amongst the English metaphysicians; though against my own judgment, for I believe that the vague use of this word has been the cause of much error and more confusion. The word, ἰδέα, in its original sense as used by Pindar, Aristophanes, and in the Gospel of St. Matthew, represented the visual abstraction of a distant object, when we see the whole without distinguishing its parts.* Plato adopted it as a technical term, and as the antithesis to εἴδωλον, or sensuous image; the transient and perishable emblem, or mental word,. of the idea. Ideas themselves he considered as mysterious powers, living, seminal, formative, and exempt from time.t In

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κρατέοντα χερὸς ἀλκᾷ, βωμὸν παρ' Ολύμπιον
κεῖνον κατὰ χρόνον γ' ἰδέα τε καλὸν

ὥρᾳ τε κεκραμένον,-Olymp. XI. (Χ.) 121.

οὐ γινώσκων, ὅτι τοῦ Πλούτου παρέχω βελτίονας ἄνδρας, καὶ τὴν γνώμην, καὶ τὴν ἰδέαν.—Aristoph. Plut. 558-9.

ἦν δὲ ἡ ἰδέα αὐτοῦ ὡς ἀστραπὴ, καὶ τὸ ἔνδυμα αὐτοῦ λευκὸν ὡσεὶ χιών.— Matt. xxviii. 3. Ed.]

+ [See the Timæus. (Bekk. III. ii. 23.) ὅτου μὲν οὖν ἂν ὁ δημιουργὸς πρὸς τὸ κατὰ ταὐτὰ ἔχον βλέπων ἀεί, τοιούτῳ τινὶ προσχρώμενος παραδείγματι, τὴν ἰδέαν αὐτοῦ καὶ δύναμιν ἀπεργάζηται, καλὸν ἐξ ἀνάγκης οὕτως ἀποτελεῖσθαι πᾶν. But the word idea is used by Plato in several senses, modified according to the natures, divine or human, in which he represents the ideas as placed. See the fine moral passage in the Republic (vii. 3.)—ἐν τῷ γνωστῷ τελευταία ἡ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἰδέα καὶ μόγις ὁρᾶσθαι, ὀφθεισα δὲ συλλογιστέα εἶναι ὡς ἄρα πᾶσι πάντων αὕτη ὀρθῶν τε καὶ καλῶν αἰτία, ἔν τε ὁρατῷ φῶς καὶ τὸν τούτου κύριον τεκοῦσα, ἔν τε νοητῷ αὐτὴ κυρία ἀλήθειαν καὶ νοῦν παρασχομένη, καὶ ὅτι δεῖ ταύτην ἰδεῖν τὸν μέλλοντα ἐμφρόνως πράξειν ἢ ἰδία ἢ δημοσίᾳ.

The notes appended by the enthusiastic Thomas Taylor to his translation of the Metaphysics of Aristotle are full of learned illustration upon this subject. Ed.]

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ciable.

the same sensation in order to become mutually assoThe same result will follow when one only of

this sense the word Idea became the property of the Platonic
school;
and it seldom occurs in Aristotle, without some such
phrase annexed to it, as according to Plato, or as Plato says.
Our English writers to the end of the reign of Charles II. or
somewhat later, employed it either in the original sense, or Pla-
tonically, or in a sense nearly correspondent to our present use
of the substantive, Ideal; always however opposing it, more or
less to image, whether of present or absent objects. The reader
will not be displeased with the following interesting exemplifi-
Ication from Bishop Jeremy Taylor. "St. Lewis the King sent
Ivo Bishop of Chartres on an embassy, and he told, that he met
a grave and stately matron on the way with a censer of fire in
one hand, and a vessel of water in the other; and observing her
to have a melancholy, religious, and phantastic deportment and
look, he asked her what those symbols meant, and what she
meant to do with her fire and water; she answered, My purpose
is with the fire to burn paradise, and with my water to quench
the flames of hell, that men may serve God purely for the love
of God. But we rarely meet with such spirits which love vir-
tue so metaphysically as to abstract her from all sensible composi-
tions, and love the purity of the idea." Des Cartes having in-
troduced into his philosophy the fanciful hypothesis of material
ideas,- -or certain configurations of the brain, which were as so
many moulds to the influxes of the external world,-Locke
adopted the term, but extended its signification to whatever is
the immediate object of the mind's attention or conscious-
ness.† Hume, distinguishing those representations which are

[The passage here ascribed to Bishop Taylor I cannot find in his works, nor have I been able to light upon the expression, "him that reads in malice or him that reads after dinner," also attributed to him by Mr. Coleridge, in any of his writings. S. C.]

t["It (Idea) being that term which, I think, serves best to stand for whatsoever is the object of the understanding, when a man thinks; I have used it to express whatever is meant by phantasm, notion, species, or whate is which the mind can

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the two ideas has been represented by the senses, the other by the memory.

and

Long9 however before either Hobbes or Des Cartes

accompanied with a sense of a present object from those reproduced by the mind itself, designated the former by impressions, and confined the word idea to the latter.*

9

[For the substance of the following paragraph, and in part for the remarks upon the doctrine of association of ideas as re presented in the writings of Aristotle, Mr. Coleridge is indebted to the very interesting and excellent treatise of J. G. E. Maasz, On the Imagination, Versuch über die Einbildungskraft, pp. 343-4-5-6. A copy of this work, (1797,) richly annotated on the margins and blank spaces, was found amongst Mr. Coleridge's books; and in so "immethodical a miscellany of literary opinions" as this the insertion of these notes may not be out of place.

"In Maasz's introductory chapters," says Mr. Coleridge, my mind has been perplexed by the division of things into matter (sensatio ab extra) and form (i. e. per-et-con-ceptio ab intra). Now as Time and Space are evidently only the universals, or modi communes, of sensation and sensuous Form, and consequently appertain exclusively to the sensuous Einbildungskraft, (=Eisemplasy, tλátteiv eiç v) which we call Imagination, Fancy, &c. all poor and inadequate terms, far inferiour to the German, Einbildung, the Law of Association derived ab extra from the contemporaneity of the impressions, or indeed any other difference of the characterless Manifold (das Mannichfaltige) except that of plus and minus of impingence, becomes incomprehensible, if not absurd. I see at one instant of time a Rose and a Lily.-Chemistry teaches me that they differ only

be employed about in thinking." Human Understand. I. i. s. 8. Ed.]

* [" By the term, Impression, then, I mean all our more lively perceptions, when we hear, or see, or feel, or love, or hate, or desire, or will. And impressions are distinguished from Ideas, which are the less lively perceptions, of which we are conscious, when we reflect on any of those sensations or movements above mentioned." Inquiry concerning the Hum. Under. S. 2. Ed.]

the law of association had been defined, and its important functions set forth by Ludovicus Vives.10 Phantasia, it is to be noticed, is employed by Vives to express the mental power of comprehension, or the active

in form, being both reducible to the same elements. If then form be not an external active power, if it be wholly transfused into the object by the esemplastic or imaginative faculty of the percipient, or rather creator, where and wherein shall I find the ground of my perception, that this is the Rose and that the Lily. In order to render the creative activity of the imagination at all conceivable, we must necessarily have recourse to the Harmonia præstabilita of Spinoza and Leibnitz: in which case the automatism of the Imagination and Judgment would he perception in the same sense as a self-conscious watch would be a percipient of Time, and inclusively of the apparent motion of the sun and stars. But, as the whole is but a choice of incomprehensibles, till the natural doctrine of physical influx, or modification of each by all, have been proved absurd, I shall still prefer it: and not doubt, that the pencil of rays forms pictures on the retina, because I cannot comprehend how this picture can excite a mental fac-simile."

Maasz, Introd. S. 1. Denn die Merkmale, wodurch ein Objekt angestellt wird, müssen entweder individuelle oder gemeinsame seyn.

Coleridge. "Deceptive. The mark in itself is always individual. By an act of the reflex understanding it may be rendered a sign or general term. The word Vorstellung has been as often mischievous as useful in German philosophy." Ed.]

10 [Originally thus-" by Melancthon, Ammerbach, and L. Vives; more especially by the last;"-part of which statement appears to have been an imperfect recollection by Mr. C. of the words of Maasz, who, after observing that in the sixteenth century the spirit of inquiry took a new turn, and that men then came forth who knew the value of empirical psychology, and took pains to enforce and elucidate its truths, proceeds as follows: Among the first to whom this merit belongs were Melancthon, Ammerbach, and Lud. Vives, whose psychological writings were published all together by Getzner (Zurich 1662). But far the most was done by Vives. He has brought together

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function of the mind; and imaginatio for the receptivity (vis receptiva) of impressions, or for the passive perception." The power of combination he appropriates to the former: “ quæ singula et simpliciter

many important observations upon the human soul, and made striking remarks thereon. More especially in the theory of the association of representations, which Melancthon and Ammerbach do not bring forward at all, he displays no ordinary knowledge." Transl. p. 343.

Philip Melancthon, a Reformer in Philosophy as well as in Religion, published, among other philosophical works, a book De Anima, 1540, in 8vo.

Vitus Amerbach, a learned author and Professor of Philosophy at Ingolstadt, was born at Wedinguen in Bavaria, and died in 1557 at the age of seventy. He also published, amongst other works, one on the Soul-De Anima, libb. iv. Lugd. Bat. 1555, 8vo, and one on Natural Philosophy-De Philosophia Naturali, libb. vi. 8vo.

John Lewis Vives was born in 1492 at Valencia in Spain, died at Bruges, according to Thuanus in 1541: was first patronized by Henry VIII. of England, who made him preceptor in Latin to the Princess Mary, and afterwards persecuted by him for opposing his divorce. He was a follower of Erasmus and opponent of the Scholastic Philosophy. His works, which are of various kinds, theological, devotional, grammatical, critical, as well as philosophical, were printed at Basle in 1555, in two vols. fol. The Treatise De Anima et Vita is contained in vol. ii. p. 497-593. S. C.]

11 [Et quemadmodum in altrice facultate videre est inesse vim quandam, quæ cibum recipiat, aliam quæ contineat, aliam quæ conficiat, quæque distribuat et dispenset: ita in animis et hominum et brutorum est functio, quæ imagines sensibus impressas recipit, quæ inde Imaginativa dicitur: est quæ continet hæc, Memoria; quæ conficit, Phantasia: quæ distribuit ad assensum aut dissensum, Extrimatrix. Sunt enim spiritalia imagines Dei, corporalia vero spiritalium quædam veluti simulachra : ut mirandum non sit, ex corporalibus spiritalia colligi, ceu ab umbris aut picturis corpora expressa. Imaginativæ actio est in animo, quæ oculi in corpore, recipere imagines intuendo: estque velut orificium quoddam

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