This chapter presents an account of the philosophical framework Coleridge worked out to explain the relationship between the diverse physical configurations of matter and the eternal, immaterial, hierarchically ordered powers he held to determine the fundamental features of the material world. It traces the development of Coleridge’s theory of matter through an examination of his extensive critical commentary on Kant’s seminal Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, the starting point for the ‘dynamical’ account of matter favoured by the Naturphilosophen. I focus on Coleridge’s search for a set of terms that would make clear and consistently maintain the ontological distinctions between (i) matter, material substance, and body, and (ii) the ‘fundamental forces’ or ‘spiritual powers’ whose divinely grounded causal activity is necessarily manifested through all such physical entities. I argue that this aspect of Coleridge’s view results from his engagement with the concepts of ‘substance’ and ‘appearance’ initially put forward by Kant and subsequently refined by Coleridge in Opus Maximum and related marginalia and manuscript fragments.