Mill admired the modernity and the democracy of Bentham's utilitarian position, but deplored its lack of imagination: "He committed the mistake of supposing that the business part of human affairs was the whole of them." Bentham failed to take into account other aspects under which human activities should be judged — the moral, the aesthetic and the sympathetic (a modern term for the latter might be "the socially cohesive"). Bentham must therefore be balanced against Coleridge.

Whereas Bentham began by asking of every received opinion "is it true?", Coleridge began by asking: "What is the meaning of it?" How can society foster those dimensions of human life that Benthamite utilitarianism cannot account for — the ethical, the beautiful, the cohesive force? Through the creation, Coleridge suggests, "of an endowed class, for the cultivation of learning, and for diffusing its results among the community". Mill describes how in his treatise On the Constitution of the Church and State, Coleridge (who was actually developing an idea first put forward in Germany by Friedrich Schiller) proposed that there should be what he termed a "nationalty" or "national property" in the form of a fund — derived from taxation — dedicated to "the advancement of knowledge, and the civilisation of the community." This national fund should support and maintain what he called a clerisy, a kind of secular clergy, with the following duties:

A certain smaller number were to remain at the fountain-heads of the humanities, in cultivating and enlarging the knowledge already possessed, and in watching over the interests of physical and moral science; being likewise the instructors of such as constituted, or were to constitute, the remaining more numerous classes of the order. The members of this latter and far more numerous body were to be distributed throughout the country, so as not to leave even the smallest integral part or division without a resident guide, guardian, and instructor; the objects and final intention of the whole order being these — to preserve the stores and to guard the treasures of past civilisation, and thus to bind the present with the past; to perfect and add to the same, and thus to connect the present with the future; but especially to diffuse through the whole community, and to every native entitled to its laws and rights, that quantity and quality of knowledge which was indispensable both for the understanding of those rights, and for the performance of the duties correspondent; finally, to secure for the nation, if not a superiority over the neighbouring states, yet an equality at least, in that character of general civilisation, which equally with, or rather more than, fleets, armies and revenue, forms the ground of its defensive and offensive power.

University courses in the humanities are of value to the state if and when they sustain a Coleridgean clerisy. Academics must remember, though, that they are a form of "national property": their work must be for the benefit not of themselves but of the entire nation. Reading Coleridge's definition of the clerisy in the light of 21st-century debates about university funding, what is most striking is the huge emphasis that he places on what is now called "dissemination". The humanising work must be "distributed throughout the country, so as not to leave even the smallest integral part or division without a resident guide, guardian, and instructor". What that might mean today is a major university working in collaboration with a local further-education college or making its lectures available to everyone through podcasts.

The responsibility — the public duty — placed upon the latter-day clerisy is heavy, but in the "knowledge economy" and faced with the global insecurity of the 21st century, the return upon a modest continuing national investment in their work of teaching is potentially vast. Even more than in Coleridge's day, the task of the clerisy is to bind past, present and future, to yoke inheritance to aspiration and tradition to innovation, and to maintain the understanding of "those rights" and "correspondent duties" that are at the core of national identity. The humanities must be protected so that they can continue to play their necessary role in "securing for the nation" that "character of general civilisation, which equally with, or rather more than, fleets, armies, and revenue, forms the ground of its defensive and offensive power".