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.32Meanwhile,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 cove 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.
Notes:
1.See Dictionary of National Biography ,under 'George Grote.'Bentham's MS .is in the British Museum,and shows,I think,that Grote's share in the work was a good deal more than mere editing.I quote from a reprint by Truelove (1875).It was privately reprinted by Grote himself in 1866.
2.Cf.Hobbes's definition:
'Fear of power invisible feigned by the mind,or imagined from tales publicly allowed,[is]RELIGION :not allowed,SUPERSTITIONS .And when the power imagined is truly such as we imagine,TRUE RELIGION .'-Works ,(Molesworth),iii,45.
3.'Philip Beauchamp,'ch.ii,pp.11-15.
4.Ibid.p.17.
5.'Philip Beauchamp,'p.21.
6.Ibid.pp.22and 104.
7.'Philip Beauchamp,'ch.iii.
8.'Philip Beauchamp,'ch.iv.
9.Ibid.p.45,ch.v.
10.Ibid.p.52,ch.vi.
11.'Philip Beauchamp,'ch.viii.
12.Ibid.part ii,ch.i.
13.Ibid.p.80,part ii,ch.ii.
14.'Philip Beauchamp,'pp.97,99.
15.Ibid.p.101.
16.Ibid.p.103.
17.'Philip Beauchamp,'p.163.
18.Ibid.p.122.
19.The writers were Chalmers,Kidd,Whewell,Sir Charles Bell,Roget,Buckland,Kirby,and Prout.The essays appeared from 1833to 1835.The versatile Brougham shortly afterwards edited Paley's Natural Theology .
20.'Philip Beauchamp.'p.88.
21.Froude's Carlyle ,i,215;ii,93.
22.Mill's Dissertations ,i,235;ii.130.
23.George Borrow's vehement dislike of Scott as the inventor of Puseyism and modern Jesuitism of all kinds is characteristic.
24.Prelude ,bk.xiii.
25.Coleridge's Letters (1890),pp.643-49.
26.Mr Hutchinson Stirling insists upon this in the Fortnightly Review for July 1867.
He proves,I think,that Coleridge's knowledge of the various schemes of German philosophy and of the precise relation of Kant,Fichte,and Schelling was altogether desultory and confused.How far this is important depends upon whether we attach much or little importance to precise combinations of words used by these philosophers.
27.Dissertations ,i,392-474.
28.Ibid.i,424.
29.Dissertations ,i,437.
30.Ibid.i,425-27.
31.Dissertations ,i,437.
32.Coleridge's Hints towards the Formation of a more Comprehensive Theory of Life ,edited by S.B.Watson,in 1848,is a curious attempt to apply his evolution doctrine to natural science.Lewes,in his Letters on Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences ,says that it is a 'shameless plagiarism'from Schelling's Erster Entwurf,etc.It seems,as far as I can judge,that Coleridge's doctrines about magnetism,reproduction,irritability,sensibility,etc.are,in fact,adapted from Schelling.The book was intended,as Mr E.H.
Coleridge tells me,for a chapter in a work on Scrophula,projected by Gillman.As Coleridge died long before the publication,he cannot be directly responsible for not acknowledging obligations to Schelling.Unfortunately he cannot claim the benefit of a good character in such matters.Anyhow,Coleridge's occasional excursions into science can only represent a vague acceptance of the transcendental method represented,as I understand,by Oken.
