4 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



have to start if we desire to make our thoughts accessible 

 and intelligible to our fellowmen, and, although we can 

 put these words and terms together in a more or less 

 original manner, we have always to accommodate our- 

 selves to the established usage, from which we can deviate 

 only to a very small extent. In this way language 

 exerts a control over the free movements of our thoughts 

 and reflections which is not infrequently felt to be severe 

 and irksome, and which is more than ever experienced in 

 that great department of literature which is the embodi- 

 ment of the philosophical thought of an age. More even 

 than in science, we may say that in philosophy progress 

 consists in finding an appropriate verbal expression, or, 

 having found it, in conveying to our readers the clear 

 definition of the meaning we desire to attach to it. 

 3. Looking broadly at the philosophical literature of any 



New terms J J 



period, we may divide its main representatives into two 

 classes viz., those who have introduced into the exist- 

 ing language new terms, the bearers of thoughts and 

 ideas constituting a new message, and those others who, 

 taking up these newly imported terms, have tried to 

 define them more closely, to prescribe their exact usage, 



of Philosophy' (1817-30), Reid's 

 writings were principally known on 

 the Continent through the influ- 

 ence they had acquired on French 



neither of them Kant even less than 

 Hegel seems to have hadasufficieut 

 acquaintance either with Reid's own 

 writings or with the principal work 

 of Hume which he criticised. This 

 is fully brought out in Henry Sidg- 

 wick's Address on "The Philosophy 

 of Common-sense" (1895), see 

 'Mind,' N.S., vol. iv. p. 145, &c. 

 He there suggests that Kant 

 was influenced by Priestley, who 

 classes Reid along with Oswald and 

 Beattie, writers of quite an inferior 

 order of merit. When Hegel de- 

 livered his Lectures on ' The History 



thinkers such as Royer Collard and 

 Jouffroy, and are accordingly 

 treated with more respect. With 

 Hegel the contempt for British 

 philosophy seems to have been 

 directed mainly against English 

 as distinguished from Scottish 

 thinkers ; see ' Werke, ' vol. xv. 

 p. 501 : " Of English philosophy 

 there can no more be any 

 mention." 



