Chapter VIII - IX Summary and Analysis

This section considers the system of Dualism which was developed by Des Cartes and refined by both Spinoza and Leibniz. To Des Cartes, the soul was intelligence and the body was matter. The soul did the thinking. The eternal work refers to the images and modifications of man's own experiences.

In Chapter IX, Coleridge, who has studied Locke, Berkeley, Leibniz, and Hartley, begins to ask if philosophy as a system differs from history and historic classification. The human mind observes, collects, and classifies. Coleridge investigates man's nature and how he learns.

Coleridge looks at some of the views of the philosopher Immanuel Kant of Prussia, who was a favorite of Coleridge. Ideas were represented by symbols. He says that Kant's followers refined the mechanics of Kant's theories.