Coleridge

(John Stuart Mill) https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/mill1838.pdf

• With Coleridge, contrary to Bentham, the very fact that any doctrine had been believed by thoughtful men and accepted by whole nations or generations of mankind was part of the problem to be solved—of the phenomena to be explained. The long duration of a belief, he thought, shows that it is adapted to some part of the human mind; and if, on digging down to the root we do not find some truth (as we generally do), we shall find some natural want or requirement of human nature that the doctrine in question is fitted to satisfy.
• With every important partial truth there are always two conflicting modes of thought, one tending to give to that truth too large, the other to give it too small, a place: and the history of opinion is generally an oscillation between the extremes.
• Now the Germano-Coleridgean doctrine is the result of a reaction against the philosophy of the 18th century.
• ‘He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.’ - Coleridge
• A State never is can never hope to be free from internal dissension; There has never been any state of society in which collisions did not occur between the immediate interests and passions of powerful sections of the people. What, then, enables society to weather these storms, and pass through turbulent times without any permanent weakening of the guarantees of peaceable existence? Precisely this: However important the interests men were quarrelling about, the conflict did not affect the fundamental principles of the system of social union that happened to exist, or threaten large portions of the community with subversion of the basis on which they had built their calculations and with which their hopes and aims had become identified.
• No-one can calculate what struggles that the cause of improvement has yet to undergo might have been spared if the philosophers of the 18th century had done anything like justice to the Past.
• How can we determine whether a thing is fit to exist without first considering what purposes it exists for and whether it is still capable of fulfilling them?
• Both the theory and practice of enlightened tolerance in matters of opinion might be exhibited in extracts from his writings more copiously than in those of any other writer I know; He holds almost all errors to be ‘truths misunderstood’, ‘half-truths taken as the whole’, though more rather than less dangerous on that account
• a Conservative philosopher cannot be wholly a conservative, but must often be a better Liberal than Liberals themselves; while he is the natural means of rescuing from oblivion truths that conservatives have forgotten and the prevailing schools of Liberalism never knew.
• ‘Lord, enlighten thou our enemies’ should be the prayer of every true Reformer; sharpen their wits, give acuteness to their perceptions, and consecutiveness and clearness to their reasoning powers. We are in danger from their folly, not from their wisdom; what fills us with apprehension is not their strength but their weakness.

• The great mass of the owners of large property, and of all the classes intimately connected with the owners, of large property, are and must be expected to be in the main Conservative. To suppose that such a mighty body can be without immense influence in the commonwealth, or to lay plans for making great spiritual or temporal changes in which they are left out of the question, would be the height of absurdity. Let those who desire such changes ask themselves if they are content that these classes should be permanently banded against them; and what progress they expect to make, or by what means, unless a process of preparation goes on in the minds of these very classes—not •by the impracticable method of converting them from Conservatives into Liberals, but •by their being led to adopt one liberal opinion after another, as a part of Conservatism itself.

  The first step towards this is to inspire them with a desire to systematise and rationalise their own actual creed; and the feeblest attempt to do this has an intrinsic value;