"[144]
The media through which he passed in search of light were numerous. He
seems to have gone to Germany under the impression that he would there
find what he had fruitlessly sought in England. No one will deny that
the philosophy of Kant was better than the English empirical system of
the eighteenth century, which was the best metaphysical pabulum he had
received at home. He applied himself to the assiduous study of Kant's
disciples, but the master satisfied him best. Nevertheless, Coleridge
was not mentally adapted to the Kantian system. He had a psychical
affinity for Schelling. He loved him as a brother. He was charmed with
his vivid imagination, warm admiration of all natural forms, and ardent,
impulsive temperament. Schelling's philosophy was Spinozism in poetry,
and there can be no question of Coleridge's former adoption of some
parts of the Hollander's naturalism. But his tenacity to them, as well
as his subsequent affiliation with Schelling, was short-lived. When he
awoke to the unmistakable stratum of Pantheism underlying Schelling's
system, he hastily forsook it, and his diatribes indignantly hurled
against one whom he had so enthusiastically admired are the more notable
because of his former intense sympathy.
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