“The Beautiful arises from the perceived harmony of an object, whether sight or sound, with the inborn and constitutive rules of the judgment and imagination: and it is always intuitive.”

—  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

On the Principles of Genial Criticism (1814)
Context: The Good consists in the congruity of a thing with the laws of the reason and the nature of the will, and in its fitness to determine the latter to actualize the former: and it is always discursive. The Beautiful arises from the perceived harmony of an object, whether sight or sound, with the inborn and constitutive rules of the judgment and imagination: and it is always intuitive.

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo
Samuel Taylor Coleridge220
English poet, literary critic and philosopher 1772–1834

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