In discussing the activity of imagination we used as an
expository device Coleridge's twofold account -- imagination
as creative and as cognitive. Coleridge also believed that
imagination 'struggles to idealize and to unify', to give shape
to the shapeless, to articulate a poem, a landscape or an entire
life. The present chapter will attempt to analyse these notions
of unity, coherence and integration, ideas which play an
obviously important part both in poetry and religious belief.
Coherence and organic unity have already been introduced
(in Chapter II) as features of the biblical 'poetry' brought out
well by the theology of images. But there we said little more
than that the coherence of image with image throughout the
Scriptures, while it was aesthetically impressive, was of
dubious value in establishing Christianity's truth. But though
I think this is so it cannot be the last word on these themes.

'Coherence' and 'integration' are not here being used in
their logical (minimal) sense of 'self-consistency', 'absence of
contradiction'. To say of a drama that it is beautifully
coherent, that its materials are well-integrated into a con-
vincing unity, is to say among other things that in this play
no sub-plots or characters are introduced unless they have a
bearing on the working-out of the principal themes. It is to say
that its ideas, symbols, images are closely interrelated (like,
for instance the imagery of fire and darkness in Macbeth),
that the whole is tightly patterned, not sprawling and
amorphous. What is commendable in a play is, in this case,
also commendable in a poem. Indeed it is within a poem,
even a short lyric, that we look for a greater degree of integra-

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