supremacy of the Moral and Practical
over the purely Speculative. Indeed, any one who goes to the study of
Kant, after having made himself acquainted with the writings of
Coleridge, will be impressed by the spontaneous and vital concurrence of
the latter with the former--the heartiness and entireness with which the
Englishman enters into the method and system of this, in many respects,
greatest philosopher of the modern world."[143]

The Platonic element in the speculations of Coleridge is of earlier date
than the German. It was his reliance until introduced to the captivating
opinions of the philosopher of Koenigsberg. But it never wholly left
him,--it was the enchantment of his life.

He had severe struggles. His conquest of the habit of opium-eating,
contracted to soothe physical suffering, is an index of the persistent
purpose of the man. At first an ardent Unitarian, he was once about to
assume charge of a congregation at Shrewsbury. But he finally declined
the offer, by saying that, "Active zeal for Unitarian Christianity, not
indolence or indifference, has been the motive of my declining a local
and solid settlement as preacher of it."[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. From Schelling he returned once
more to Kant as the think