Now,it is abundantly clear that Coleridge never studied any philosophy systematically,He never acquired a precise acquaintance with the technical language of various schemes,or cared for their precise logical relations to each other.The 'genial coincidence'with Schelling,though an unlucky phrase,represents a real fact,He dipped into Plotinus or Behmen or Kant or Schelling,or any one who interested him,and did not know whether they were simply embodying ideas already in his own mind,or suggesting new ideas;or,what was probably more accurate,expressing opinions which,in a general way,were congenial to his own way of contemplating the world.His power of stimulating other minds proves sufficiently that he frequently hit upon impressive and suggestive thoughts.He struck out illuminating sparks,but he never diffused any distinct or steady daylight.His favourite position,for example,of the distinction between the Reason and the Understanding is always coming up and being enforced with the strongest asseverations of its importance.
That he had adopted it more or less from Kant is obvious,though I imagine it to be also obvious that he did not clearly understand his authority.26To what,precisely,it amounts is also unintelligible to me.Somehow or other,it implies that the mind can rise into transcendental regions,and,leaving grovelling Utilitarians and the like to the conduct of the understanding in matters of practical expediency,can perceive that the universe is in some way evolved from the pure reason,and the mind capable of ideas which correspond to stages of the evolution.How this leads to the conclusions that the Christian doctrines of the Logos and the Trinity are embodiments of pure philosophy is a problem upon which I need not touch.When we have called Coleridge a mystic,with flashes of keen insight into the weakness of the opposite theory,I do not see how we are to get much further,or attribute to him any articulate and definite scheme.
Hopelessly unsystematic as Coleridge may have been,his significance in regard to the Utilitarians is noteworthy.It is indicated in a famous article which J.S.Mill contributed to the Westminster Review in March 1840,27Mill's concessions to Coleridge rather scandalised the faithful;and it is enough to observe here that it marks the apogee of Mill's Benthamism.Influences,of which I shall have to speak,had led him to regard his old creed as imperfect,and to assent to great part of Coleridge's doctrine.Mill does not discuss the metaphysical or theological views of the opposite school,though he briefly intimates his dissent.But it is interesting to observe how Coleridge impressed a disciple of Bentham.The 'Germano-Coleridgian doctrine,'says Mill,was a reaction against the philosophy of the eighteenth century:'ontological,''conservative,''religious,''concrete and historical,'and finally 'poetical,'because the other was 'experimental,''innovative,''infidel,''abstract and metaphysical,'and 'matter-of-fact and prosaic.'
Yet the two approximate,and each helps to restore the balance and comes a little nearer to a final equilibrium.The error of the French philosophers had been their negative and purely critical tendency.They had thought that it was enough to sweep away superstition,priestcraft,and despotism,and that no constructive process was necessary.They had not perceived the necessity of social discipline,of loyalty to rulers,or of patriotic feeling among the subjects.They had,therefore,entirely failed to recognise the historical value of old creeds and institutions,and had tried to remodel society 'without the binding forces which hold society together.'28Hence,too,the philosophes came to despise history;and D'Alembert is said to have wished that all record of past events could be blotted out.
Their theory,in its popular version at least,came to be that states and churches had been got up 'for the sole purpose of picking people's pockets.'29This had become incredible to any intelligent reasoner,and any Tory could prove that there was something good in the past,the peculiarity of the 'Germano-Coleridgian'school was that they saw beyond the immediate controversy.
They were the first to inquire with any power into 'the inductive laws of the existence and growth of human society';the first to recognise the importance of the great constructive principles;and the first to produce not a piece of party advocacy,but 'a philosophy of society in the only form in which it is yet possible,that of a philosophy of history.'Hence arose that 'series of great writers and thinkers,from Herder to Michelet,'who have given to past history an intelligible place in the gradual evolution of humanity.30This very forcible passage is interesting in regard to Mill,and shows a very clear perception of some defects in his own philosophy.It also raises an important question.