SOURCE: "Isaac Newton," in Coleridge on the Seventeenth Century, edited by Roberta Florence Brinkley, Duke University Press, 1955, pp. 399-408.

In the following excerpts, which are taken from various published and unpublished sources, including letters and notes written in the margins of books, Coleridge comments on Newton's debt to Johannes Kepler, criticizes Newton's Opticks, and notes that Newton's Observations on the biblical books of Daniel and Revelations are "little less than mere raving." Given the variety of sources from which these observations are drawn, the date assigned is based on the year of Coleridge's death.

Galileo was a great genius, and so was Newton; but it would take two or three Galileos and Newtons to make one Kepler. It is in the order of Providence, that the inventive, generative, constitutive mind—the Kepler—should come first; and then that the patient and collective mind—the Newton—should follow, and...