passive but an active agent in the apprehension of reality. The author believed in the "self-sufficing power of absolute Genius" and distinguished between genius and talent as between "an egg and an egg-shell". The first volume culminates in his gnomic definition of the imagination or "esemplastic power", the faculty by which the soul perceives the spiritual unity of the universe, as distinguished from the fancy or merely associative function. Coleridge writes: The famous definition of the imagination emerges from a discussion of Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, amongst others. (Being fluent in German, Coleridge was one of the first major English literary figures to discuss Schelling's ideas, in particular.) The primary imagination is that which we use in our everyday perception of things in the world. When Coleridge's God creates nature, He makes nature a reflection of the formal qualities of the Son, the second person in the Trinity. The primary imagination (by which we perceive nature) is thus 'a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM'. However, the later Coleridge took a darker view of nature and the human imagination, viewing both as fallen and referring to his definition in the Biographia as 'unformed and immature'. Wordsworth and poetic diction The later chapters of the book deal with the nature of poetry and with the question of diction raised by Wordsworth. While maintaining a general agreement with Wordsworth's point of view, Coleridge elaborately refutes his principle that the language of poetry should be one taken with due exceptions from the mouths of men in real life, and that there can be no essential difference between the language of prose and of metrical composition. A critique on the qualities of Wordsworth's poetry concludes the volume. The book contains Coleridge's celebrated and vexed distinction between "imagination" and "fancy". Chapter XIV is the origin of the famous critical concept of the "willing suspension of disbelief" when reading poetic works. The missing transcendental deduction At the beginning of chapter 13, Coleridge attempts to bring his philosophical argument to a head with the following claim: DESCARTES, speaking as a naturalist, and in imitation of Archimedes, said, give me matter and motion and I will construct you the universe…. In the same sense the transcendental philosopher says; grant me a nature having two contrary forces, the one of which tends