We preached Pantisocracy and Aspheterism everywhere. These, Tom, are two new words, the first signifying the equal government of all, and the other the generalisation of individual property; words well understood in the city of Bristol.
The date of the letter is from Robert Southey ([1849?]), chapter III, in Charles Cuthbert Southey, editor, The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, →OCLC, page 75.

In short he Robert Southey] was always guided by his sympathies; and as he was never in his hottest days of Aspheterism anything like a consistent and reasoned Radical, so in his most rancorous days of reaction he never was a consistent and reasoned Tory.

A more free-wheeling verbal invention of [Samuel Taylor] Coleridge's, "Aspheterism," meant the absence of private property. "Aspheterism" would vanquish materialism and help raise a generation of children untainted by corrupt values.

"Aspheterism," then, the belief that only an abolition of private property would bring about the desired moral transformation, lies at the very heart of Pantisocracy. [Robert] Southey and [Samuel Taylor] Coleridge believed that once people returned to sharing a "common ground," they would no longer feel envy or a need to compete. […] But "aspheterism" was not the only milestone on their path to universal philanthropy; it was accompanied by ideas about improving everyday interpersonal behaviour.

Aspheterism

Meaning

Noun

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