Page:The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.djvu/258

 hominem ; hence each step of nature hath its ideal, and hence the possibility of a climax up to the perfect form of a harmonized chaos.

To the idea of life victory or strife is neces- sary ; as virtue consists not simply in the ab- sence of vices, but in the overcoming of them. So it is in beauty. The sight of what is subor- dinated and conquered heightens the strength and the pleasure ; and this should be exhibited by the artist either inclusively in his figure, or else out of it and beside it to act by way of supplement and contrast. And with a view to this, remark the seeming identity of body and mind in infants, and thence the loveliness of the former ; the commencing separation in boyhood, and the struggle of equilibrium in youth : thence onward the body is first simply indifferent ; then demanding the translucency of the mind not to be worse than indifferent ; and finally all that presents the body as body becoming almost of an excremental nature.

LECTURE XIV.

ON STYLE.

I have, I believe, formerly observed with re- gard to the character of the governments of the East, that their tendency was despotic, that is, towards unity ; whilst that of the Greek