SOURCE: "Wordsworth's Naturalism," in The Concept of Nature in Nineteenth-Century English Poetry, The Macmillan Publishing Company, 1936, pp. 110-57.

In the following excerpt, Beach compares Coleridge's beliefs regarding nature and "spirit" with Wordsworth's stance regarding nature and religion.

There was a moment, in [Coleridge's] own verse, when he was disposed to express himself in vaguely pantheistic terms. But there was relatively little of "naturalism" in this phase, and it was soon over. In his prose writings Coleridge took particular pains to deny the validity of the current conceptions of nature—which, he says, should be regarded as the direct antithesis of spirit.

I have attempted to fix the meaning of the words, Nature and Spirit, the one being the antithesis to the other: so that the most general and negative definition of Nature is, Whatever is not Spirit; and vice versa of Spirit, That which is not comprehended in...