The Bundung Conference and its principles-A study in interna- ... 17 Peep into the Socio-Economic life of Bengal at the end of the S. K. Mukherjee f India's attitude towards the aspirations of Afro-Asian Nations Professor Manoher Lal, the first Minto Professor of Economics, Calcutta University-The story of his resignation 45 54 59 65 133 : ... 73 ... ... ... ... ... ... TWICE DAILY after meals.. Two spoonful of Mritasanjfbani mized with The Season's greatest restorative for that extra sparkle-in your health four spoonsful of Mahadraksharista (6 years old) 1. Coleridge was not so much interested in the emotional aspect of poetry, but in the voluntary aspects of poetic creation A conscious direction of the will is present in all great literature. Such a will introduces a method or system as the animating principle. This method may be another name for imagination which calls time "into life and moral being," which is conducive to the "homogeneity of character," and which spreads "the tone, the atmosphere, of the ideal world around situations, of which, for the common view, custom had bedimmed all lustre" (Friend II. 4; 1812). It communicates to the fleeting moments 'the imperishableness of a spiritual nature (Fr. 490). By method he means 'unity with progression' It is "that which unites, and makes many things one in the mind of man." He observes that poetry "owes its whole charm, and all its beauty, and all its power, to the philosophical principles of the Method" (Treatise on Method 36). It is a principle of unity which realises greater and greater coherence as it progresses with the materials like feelings, emotions, thoughts, ideas and words. Method becomes natural "to the mind which bas become accustomed to contemplate not things only, or for their own sake alone, but likewise and chiefly the relations of things, either their relations to each other, or to the observer or to the state and apprehension of the bearers. To enumerate and analyse these relations, with the conditions under which alone they are discoverable is to teach the science of method" (The Friend, 491-92). Method, then implies a union of many facts or factors directed by and to a common end (Fr. 511). It is the principle seeking to realise the unity of the things, and their unity with the conscious self. In this endeavour the progression is towards an identity, towards the elevation of things to that of living words. As a consequence it integrates the external with the internal. In this process the principle of Method implies a proper balance "between our passive impressions and the mind's own reactions on the same" (Fr. 494). That is, it takes consciousness to the intenser moment of self-consciousness, a moment when one strikes us as inspired. It is "the unpremeditated and evidently habitual arrangement of (the poet's) words, grounded on the habit of foreseeing, in each integral part, or in every sentence, the whole that (the poet) intends to communicate" (The Friend, pp. 489.90). Thus the operation of the method is that activity of self-consciousness which has a definite vision of the end to be realised. This vision is at the very starting post. And then it agrees with the immanent teleology of the universe which is what Coleridge means by the creativity of nature. The expression assumed by method depends upon the nature and progression of the emotions. The emotion strives to express itself in a specific form. The "exuberance of mind......interferes with the forms of method; but sterility of mind......wanting the spring and impulse to mental action, is wholly destructive of the method" (The Friend, 494. It is the habit of method that can give connections and sequence. The fusion of passion, as in the case of Mrs. Quickly, replaces these. The want of method submits the understanding to mere events and images which are neither classified nor appropriated properly. The only connections such persons are aware of, are those of time and place (Fr. 491). All logical and psychological relations are overlooked. Then too the form may be maintained or preserved but it will be a form embodying confusion; confusion and formality are therefore declared to be the opposite poles of the same null-point (Fr. 497). "The terms system, method, science, are mere improprieties of courtesy, when applied to a mass enlarging by endless appositions, but without a nerve that oscillates, or a pulse that throbs, in sign of growth or inward sympathy" (Ibid 3.132). The normal being calls only his memory into action and he tries to reproduce the objects. and events in the order in which they first occurred to him. He makes no attempt at relating them to one another round any specific centre. This is what he calls "a staple, or starting-post, in the narrator himself." Once there is a starting-post, then "things the most remote and diverse in time, place, and outward circumstance, are brought into mental contiguity and succession, the more striking as the less expected" (Ibid 495). It is the educated and systematising mind that gives a character and individuality to its moments. This specific character comes from the germinal power. It is the absence of method that characterises fancy or associationism But "The absence of the leading thought,' of the initiative, results in mental confusion. True method involves "a progressive transition" which always presupposes a prior conception of the end. Consequently the expression of such a mind is characterised by compression and rapidity, by the omission of the superfluous, and by the attention to what is necessary. The tendency to omission secures unity. the absence of the principle of progression results in 'a mere dead arrangement' (Fr. 497). The improgressive arrangeinent falls in the same category as the 'mere mode or set fashion of doing a thing' (Fr 499). What is needed for a true method is an awareness of purpose prior to the embodiment in a form. The precognition refers to the apprehension of the whole; and "the whole is of necessity prior to its parts" (Fr. 511). The intuition of the entire work of art is necessary before it is actually executed. Speaking of Shakespeare he observes: "In all his various characters, we still feel ourselves communicating with the same nature, which is everywhere present as the vegetable sap in the branches, sprays, leaves, buds, blossoms, and fruits, their shapes, tastes, and odours." It is here that we find "that just proportion, that union and interpenetration, of the universal and particular, which must ever pervade all works of decided genius and true science. For method implies a progressive transition, and it is the meaning of the word in the original language" (Fr. 497). Continuous transition is necessary to the method; and neither continuity nor transition would be possible if there is no pre-conception, no precogitation. It is the 'progressive transition without breach of continuity,' the 'principle of unity with progression' (Fr. 500). Neither a generalisation, nor a theory, nor a hypothesis can be the ground of the method. One can at best say that method implies or involves some sort of a relation. The relation of law is the Kantian relation of the category. This is based on identity. A second relation is the causal one. These two are welded into a unity by the principle of method. Having its roots in experience and in knowledge, it is enlivened by the insights of the artist. This enlivening |