In one of his early poems, Coleridge has well expressed a
truth, which is not the less important because it is not generally
admitted. The idea is briefly this: that the mind gives to all things
their coloring, their gloom, or gladness; that the pleasure we derive
from external nature is primarily from ourselves:--
"from the mind itself must issue forth
A light, a glory, a fair luminous mist,
Enveloping the earth."
The real difficulty of these lifelong hunters after the beautiful exists
in their own spirits. They set up certain models of perfection in their
imaginations, and then go about the world in the vain expectation of
finding them actually wrought out according to pattern; very
unreasonably calculating that Nature will suspend her everlasting laws
for the purpose of creating faultless prodigies for their especial
gratification.
The authors of Gayeties and Gravities give it as their opinion that no
object of sight is regarded by us as a simple disconnected form, but
that--an instantaneous reflection as to its history, purpose, or
associations converts it into a concrete one,--a process, they shrewdly
remark, which no thinking being can prevent, and which can only be
avoided by the unmeaning and stolid stare of "a goose on the common or a
cow on the green.
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