The correct answer is 1. primary imagination because, according to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, primary imagination is the fundamental human ability to perceive the world and make sense of sensory experiences. Coleridge distinguishes between primary imagination and secondary imagination in his philosophical work, Biographia Literaria (1817).
Here's how the distinction works:
Primary imagination: This is the basic, universal faculty of perception and cognition that every human possesses. It's an automatic and unconscious ability to receive and process sensory input from the external world. Coleridge describes it as "the living power and prime agent of all human perception." It allows us to see, understand, and interpret the world around us, making it possible for us to glean symbols from nature and reality.
Secondary imagination: This is a higher-level, creative function that works upon the primary imagination. It is deliberate and conscious, used by artists and poets to transform and re-imagine the raw data of sensory perception into something new. This is the imagination involved in the creation of art and metaphor.
Fancy: This refers to a lower, mechanical form of imagination that simply recombines images and ideas in a superficial way, without creating anything fundamentally new or insightful. It is more decorative and does not involve deep symbolic meaning.
Intuition: While intuition involves direct, instinctive understanding, it is not specifically connected to Coleridge’s theory of imagination.
Since Coleridge believed that primary imagination is our basic power to perceive and interpret the world around us, the correct answer is 1. primary imagination.
Year-wise PYQs
