Unfortunately or otherwise, the poetical sentiment
could never get itself translated into philosophical theory.
Coleridge's random and discursive hints remained mere hints--a
suggestion at best for future thought. Mill's criticism shows how far
they could be assimilated by a singularly candid Utilitarian. To him,
we see, they represented mainly the truth that his own party,
following the general tendency of the eighteenth century, had been led
to neglect the vital importance of the constructive elements of
society; that they had sacrificed order to progress, and therefore
confounded progress with destruction, and failed to perceive the real
importance in past times even of the institutions which had become
obsolete. Social atomism or individualism, therefore, implied a total
misconception of what Mill calls the 'evolution of humanity.' This
marks a critical point. The 'Germano-Coleridgians' had a theory of
evolution. By evolution, indeed, was meant a dialectical evolution;
the evolution of 'ideas' or reason, in which each stage of history
represents a moment of some vast and transcendental process of
thought. Evolution, so understood, seemed rightly or wrongly to be
mere mysticism or intellectual juggling. It took leave of fact, or
managed by some illegitimate process to give to a crude generalisation
from experience the appearance of a purely logical deduction. In this
shape, therefore, it was really opposed to science, although the time
was to come in which evolution would present itself in a scientific
form.[641] Meanwhile, the concessions made by J. S. Mill were not
approved by his fellows, and would have been regarded as little short
of treason by the older Utilitarians. The two schools, if Coleridge's
followers could be called a school, regarded each other's doctrines as
simply contradictory. In appealing to experience and experience alone,
the Utilitarians, as their opponents held, had reduced the world to a
dead mechanism, destroyed every element of cohesion, made society a
struggle of selfish interests, and struck at the very roots of all
order, patriotism, poetry, and religion. They retorted that their
critics were blind adherents of antiquated prejudice, and sought to
cover superstition and despotism either by unprovable dogmatic
assertions, or by taking refuge in a cloudy mystical jargon, which
really meant nothing.

They did not love each other.

FOOTNOTES:

[610] See _Dictionary of National Biography_