360 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



as hypocrisy and cant. Such may, indeed, exist to 

 some extent, perhaps to a greater extent than in 

 neighbouring continental countries, but it would be 

 unjust not to recognise that this characteristic quality 

 has its ground in the peculiar form of what may be 

 called the popular logic of the English race. This 

 logic requires always a large and well-established mass 

 of facts wherewith to begin and whereon to rest its 

 arguments. To what extent this sense for the factual 

 and historical owes its existence and convincing power 

 to the absence of any break in the continuity of the 

 nation's history for a period of many centuries, combined 

 with the insular compactness of social life and progress, 

 may be difficult, if not impossible, to decide. There is, 

 however, no doubt that it is distasteful to many 

 thoughtful minds in this country to leave the region 

 and level of clear facts in quest of the underlying 

 causes and beginnings, or to abstract and vaporise 

 them in favour of some supposed systematic eonstruc- 

 51. tion. English thought, and notably English philo- 



Englisli ii....n-i Ti 



thought sophical thought, is, therefore, intrinsically neither radical 



neither jt o 



radical nor j-^qj. systematic. It has not developed that interest in 



systematic. •' •*■ 



either the substructures or the superstructures of reality 

 which is so common among continental thinkers ; with 

 Descartes and Kant as representatives on the one side, 

 with Hegel and Schopenhauer on the other. 



Neither the English nor the Scotch intellect will trust 

 itself to the guidance of purely logical formula, or 

 venture more than a few steps up or down the ladder 

 of syllogism ; for it is always in fear of losing in such 

 ventures the grasp of that which constitutes the essence 



