complete conception of the operations of art can be formed
without a complete metaphysical theory; but both are difficult to
attain. Both lead to speculation, controversy, and a thousand
opportunities of error. And any systematically complete theory of
art, seeking as it must to account for infinity, must, like all
metaphysical systems, fall short of the truth by precisely the
difference between infinite thought and the thought of one man--by the
difference between the Universe and You or Me. Those who are anxious
to learn what can be learnt about the creative process, and to explain
it to themselves, not in terms of abstract thought, but in terms of
the humanly intelligible and appreciable, may be satisfied with a
lower degree of truth, with something more certain though not fully
explained. We may be content if we can hit upon some least common
denominator free from the controversies of metaphysics.

If that is our object, Coleridge has given us too much. But he has
also given us too little. So generalised is his treatment that we are
led to the conclusion that his perfect artist (who cannot exist) ought
to express nothing less than the whole of himself in one single
comprehensive work of art, as the divine Creator is conceived to have
produced one harmonious expression of Himself in the Universe. What he
does not sufficiently discuss is the imperfect artist--the only artist
that has yet been given to the world. It is true the great genius in
letters, or any other kind of art, can never rest content until he has
bodied forth in a multitude of works all of that complex which is his
conception of life. But he works under the conditions of time and
space. His conception of life has been modified before he has had time
to vanquish time. In practice, at any given moment, he is at work upon
a single aspect of life, upon one part only of his general
conception, so that the most immediate task before him is not that of
_unifying_ nature, but of _separating_, of _selecting_; and only when
he has thus separated and selected can he proceed to make a unity
within that restricted sphere of nature--his particular subject. On
this practical question, this problem, not of perfection but of
imperfection, Coleridge is characteristically silent.

But at least we must follow him in his view that the great artist is
engaged in the attempt to body forth, through the symbols which
external nature provides him, his fundamental conceptions a