Coleridge and Andrew Baxter on dreaming

Journal/Book: Dreaming. 1997; 7: 233 Spring St, New York, NY 10013-1578. Human Sci Press Inc. 157-169.

Abstract: Andrew Baxter's Enquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul (1733) included an attempt to prove its immateriality by studying the nature of dreams. Since he took the body to consist entirely of inert matter, it followed that any dream must be caused by some ''living, intelligent cause'' that was External to it Coleridge's statement in 1827 asserting the importance of Baxter's work points back to his first acquaintance with it in the mid-1790s and indicates a subsequent influence on his thinking that was still at work. Some effects can be found, it is suggested, in Coleridge's tolerance of the idea of external spirits; still more fruitful was Baxter's discussion of the interworking of active and passive powers in the imagination, including its implications for Coleridge's thinking about the nature of the subjective and the objective and his continuing puzzlement concerning the relationship between the powers of conscience and those of the unconscious creative imagination.

Note: Article Beer J, Univ Cambridge Peterhouse, Cambridge CB2 1RD, ENGLAND

Keyword(s): imagination; fancy; nightmare; soul; supernatural

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