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In Biographia Literaria, Coleridge comments that the difference between ‘Fancy’

and ‘Imagination’ is the same as the difference between a mechanical mixture and

a chemical mixture. Elaborate.

“The theory of imagination”, as Masao Okamoto observes, “which was coming to have a

very important role in the literary criticism in England, came to maturity towards the end of the

eighteenth century, and was consummated in the criticism of S.T. Coleridge.” Under the

influence of his father, John Coleridge who was well-versed in Greek, Latin and Hebrew,

Samuel read many books from his childhood and in his early teens he was called by Lamb, a

“logician, metaphysician, Bard!” According to Lamb, Coleridge was heard reading such books

as Iamblicus and Plotinus out loud in the corridor of Christ Hospital.

In his “Essays on the Principles of General Criticism”, written in 1814, we find two

long quotations from Plotinus’ Enneads for the explanation of Beauty, one of which he also

quoted in Biographia Literaria. J.V. Baker, author of The Sacred River, says that Plotinus’

theory of knowledge especially contributed much to the formation of Coleridge’s theory of

imagination. I.A. Richards, too quoting Enneads V.viii,1, said that it is certainly one of the

origins of Coleridge’s imagination theory (Okamoto,13).Coleridge also read Shakespeare and

Milton as well as the Greek tragic poets, as lessons, which built up his literary spirit and taste,

together with Bowle’s Sonnets, Ossian’s Poems, Darwin’s Botanic Garden, Percy’s Reliques and

Akenside’s Pleasures of Imagination, all of which contributed to bring him to the Romantic

awakening. Coleridge denounced the empiricist assumption that the mind was a tabula rasa on

which external experience and sense impressions were imprinted, stored, recalled and combined
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through a process of association. He divided the “mind” into two distinct faculties of

“Imagination” and “Fancy”:

The imagination then I consider either as primary or secondary. The primary Imagination

I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception and as a repetition

in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I Am. The secondary I

consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical

with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode

of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates. In order to re-create; or where this

process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify. It

is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead.

(Gutenberg, Coleridge, XIII)

Coleridge divided the concept of imagination into primary and secondary. By primary

imagination, he refers to our basic mental capacity to see and organize stimuli from the world

around us.

Though Coleridge seems not to have been aware of the analysis of the imaginative or

associative power made by Germans like Hissman in his early history of associationism and

Johann Georg Sulzer in his Allgemeine Theorie der schomen Kunste (1771-4; 1792-9), he was

familiar with all others like Locke, Berkley, Addison and Bacon and others. They were

interrelated, almost tangled, in their common sources, and influences. Coleridge considers the

primary imagination as the power behind what Coleridge elsewhere calls “the mystery of

perception”. It is “the living Power and prime agent of all human Perception”. Its synthetic

power operates through the most direct contact of the mind and the nature. From a series of sense
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images not necessarily visual the primary imagination forms an intelligible view of the world. It

is the primary imagination that creates or repeats “in the finite mind” what we do associate, the

objects and process of nature, which themselves are products of “the eternal act of creation in the

infinite I Am”. The poetic or secondary imagination becomes the fullest exercise of the self and

of its inner powers. It is “free will, our only absolute self”, that controls and directs the creative

activity of the art.

"Fancy," in Coleridge's eyes was employed for tasks that were "passive" and

"mechanical", the accumulation of fact and documentation of what is seen. Fancy, Coleridge

argued, was "too often the adulterator and counterfeiter of memory."The Imagination on the

other hand was "vital" and transformative, "a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of

creation." For Coleridge, it was the Imagination that was responsible for acts that were truly

creative and inventive and, in turn, that identified true instances of fine or noble art:

FANCY, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with, but fixities and definites.

The Fancy is indeed no other than a mode of Memory emancipated from the order of time

and space; while it is blended with, and modified by that empirical phenomenon of the

will, which we express by the word CHOICE. But equally with the ordinary memory the

Fancy must receive all its materials ready made from the law of association.

(Gutenberg, Coleridge, XIII).

Fancy is what today is known as taste or at best aesthetics: the arrangement of form and colour in

pleasing proportions.
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The difference between imagination and fancy, according to Coleridge, is one of kind

rather than degree. During the seventeenth century, the terms ‘imagination’ and ‘fancy’ had

almost been used in a synonymous sense. The eighteenth century accorded a superior sense first

to on term and then to the other, but finally, by the end of the century imagination came to be

firmly established as the superior term. It was Wordsworth’s reading of a poem in manuscript

that aroused Coleridge’s interest in the problem of imagination and fancy. The poem had a deep

impact upon him. Pondering over the reasons for this, he concludes that “fancy and imagination

were two distinct and widely different faculties instead of being, according to the general belief,

either two names, with one meaning, or at furthest, the lower and higher degree of our and the

same power”. As illustration, he asserts that “Milton had a highly imaginative, Cowley a very

fanciful mind.”

Imagination and fancy, however, differs in kind. Fancy is not a creative power at all. It

only combines what is perceives into beautiful shapes, but like the imagination it does not fuse

and unify. The difference between the two is the same as the difference between a mechanical

mixture and a chemical compound. In a mechanical mixture a number of ingredients are brought

together. They are mixed up, but they do not lose their individual properties. In a chemical

compound, the different ingredients combine to form something new. The different ingredients

no longer exist as separate identities. They lose their respective properties and fuse together to

create something new and entirely different. A compound is an act of creation; while a mixture is

merely a bringing together of a number of separate elements.

Thus imagination creates new shapes and forms of beauty by fusing and unifying the
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different impressions it receive from the external world. Fancy is not creative. It is a kind of

memory; it randomly brings together images, and even when brought together, they continue to

retain their separate and individual properties. They receive no coloring or modification from the

mind. It is merely mechanical juxtaposition and not a chemical fusion. Coleridge explains the

point by quoting two passages from Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis. The following lines from

this poem serve to illustrate Fancy:

Full gently now she takes him by the hand.

A lily prisoned in a goal of snow

Or ivory in an alabaster band

So white a friend engirds so white a foe. (Gutenberg, Coleridge, XIII).

In these line images are drawn from memory, but they do not interpenetrate into one another.

The following lines from the same poem illustrate the power and function of Imagination:

Look! How a bright star shooteth from the sky

So glides he in the night from Venus’ eye. (Gutenberg, Coleridge, XIII).

For Coleridge, Fancy is the drapery of poetic genius but imagination is its very soul which forms

all into one graceful and intelligent whole.

Coleridge owed his interest in the study of imagination to Wordsworth. But

Wordsworth was interested only in the practice of poetry and he considered only the impact of

imagination on poetry; Coleridge on the other hand, is interested in the theory of imagination. He

is the first critic to study the nature of imagination and examine its role in creative activity.

Secondly, while Wordsworth uses Fancy and Imagination almost as synonyms, Coleridge is the

first critic to distinguish between them and define their respective roles. Thirdly, Wordsworth
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does not distinguish between primary and secondary imagination. Coleridge’s treatment of the

subject is, on the whole, characterized by greater depth, penetration and philosophical subtlety. It

is his unique contribution to literary theory.

Most critics after Coleridge who distinguished fancy from imagination treated to make

fancy simply the faculty that produces a lesser., lighter, or humorous kind of poetry, and to make

imagination the faculty that produces a higher, more serious, and more passionate poetry. And

the concept of “imagination” itself is as various as the modes of psychology that critics have

adopted (associationist, gestalt, Freudian, Jungian), while its processes vary according to the way

in which a critic conceives of the nature of a poem (as essentially realistic or essentially

visionary, as a verbal construction or as “myth”, as “pure poetry” or as a work designed to

produce effects on an audience).

Thus, Coleridge gave the concept of Fancy and imagination and also explained about

alloting imagination a higher position than fancy.

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Works Cited

1. Bate J, W. “The English Heritage of Coleridge of Brislot 1798: The Basis in

Eighteenth century English Thought for the Distinction between Imagination and

Fancy by Wilma L. Kennedy”. The John Hopkins University Press. Modern

Language Notes Vol 62, No.8. Dec 1947. Web. 25 May 2019.

2. Bullitt, John. W.Jackson, Bate. “Distinction between Fancy & Imagination in 18th

Century English Criticism”. The John Hopkins University Press. Modern Language

Notes. Vol 60, No.1, pp 8-15. Jan 1945. Web. 25 May 2019.

3. Coleridge, S.T. Biographia Literaria. Project Gutenberg. July 2004.Web. 24 May

2019.

4. Hill, Spencer, John. A Coleridge Companion. The Macmillan Press Ltd. London.

Palgrave Macmillan.1985. Print.

5. Okamoto, Masao. “Coleridge and his theory of Imagination”. Web. 25 May 2019.

6. Pradhan, S.V. “Coleridge’s ‘Philoscrisy’ and His Theory of Fancy and Secondary

Imagination”. Boston University. Studies in Romanticism, Vol 13, No.3. Summer

1947. Web. 25 May 2019.

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