OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 30/05/17, SPi 10 Coleridge’s ‘Order of the Mental Powers’ and the Energic–Energetic Distinction Peter Cheyne It is often remarked that Coleridge attempts too much, and, as an intellectual hoarder, rejects too little on either side of the grand philosophical debates in which he engages. Yet he frequently alludes to the ‘Principle of Polarity’ and the maxim ‘Extremes Meet’ when justifying these apparent contradictions in his very copious— some would say impossibly overstretched—attempts at philosophical synthesis. Did his ever-inclusive, contradiction-straddling approach produce luminous mist, or soporific smog; enlightened synthesis, or well-meaning muddle? My response to this question develops as I enlist Coleridge to help elucidate contemplation as a state that arises at the extremes, at the poles of human mental life. I argue that Coleridge is a two-level theorist, with higher-level, energic¹ acts and ideals in the higher understanding, imagination, and reason organizing and cohering, at least ideally, the lower-level, energetic desires, associations, and conceptual structuring of sense, fancy, and the lower understanding. From this position I will then argue for a two-level view of contemplation, with the purer, noëtic mode occurring at the apex of the higher level (Coleridge’s ‘Reason’) and developed in rela- tively few self-possessed individuals, with this distinguished from an inchoate, sensual mode, familiar, but still rare, and open to all without effort, though inaccessible to will (Cheyne 2016 further discusses the inchoate mode). 1. POLAR APPROACH Coleridge developed a polar philosophy from thinkers as otherwise diverse as Heraclitus, Plato,² Nicholas Cusanus, Bruno, Böhme, and Schelling, and from reflection on the work of British anti-reductionist physiologist Richard Saumarez. In keeping with his polar theory, I will describe a view of contemplation arising in ¹ e Coleridgean sense of this word will be explained soon; suffice to say for now that the energic represents a higher-level, directed use of mental energy involving free will and reason, in contrast to lower-level, energetic impulses and concatenations involving desire and association. ² On Plato as a polar theorist, my position is in agreement with esleff 1999, the clearest and most comprehensive presentation of Plato as a two-level, non-Two-Worlds theorist.