So far as we are able to collect the opinions of Coleridge by fragments
from his writings, we discover two elements, which, coming from totally
different sources, and originating in different ages, harmonized in his
mind and constituted the mass of his speculations. One was Grecian,
taking its rise in Plato and afterward becoming assimilated to
Christianity at Alexandria. The other was German, derived directly from
Kant, and undergoing no improvement by its processes of transformation
at the hands of that philosopher's successors. "From the Greek," says
Dr. Shedd, "he derived the doctrine of Ideas, and fully sympathized with
his warmly-glowing and poetic utterance of philosophic truths. From the
German he derived the more strictly scientific part of his system--the
fundamental distinctions between the Understanding and the Reason (with
the sub-distinction of the latter into Speculative and Practical), and
between Nature and Spirit. With him also he sympathized in that deep
conviction of the absolute nature and validity of the great ideas of
God, Freedom, and Immortality--of the binding obligation of
conscience--and generally of the supremacy of the Moral and Practical
over the purely Speculative.
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