THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL: REID; STEWART.--The Scottish School (end of the eighteenth century) was pre-eminently a school of men who attached themselves to common sense and were excellent moralists. We must at any rate mention Thomas Reid and Dugald Stewart. They were bent especially on opposing the transcendent idealism of Berkeley and the scepticism of David Hume, also in some measure Locke's doctrine of the blank sheet. They reconstituted the human mind and even the world (which had been so to speak driven off in vapour by their predecessors), much as they were in the time of Descartes. Let us believe, they said, in the reality of the external world; let us believe that there are causes and effects; let us believe there is an _ego,_ a human person whom we directly apprehend, and who is a cause; let us believe that we are free and that we are responsible because we are free, etc. They were, pre-eminently, excellent describers of states of the soul, admirable psychological moralists and they were the ancestors of the highly remarkable pleiad of English psychologists of the nineteenth century. CHAPTER V FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Voltaire a Disciple of Locke. Rousseau a Freethinking Christian, but deeply Imbued with Religious Sentiments. Diderot a Capricious Materialist. D'Holbach and Helvetius Avowed Materialists. Condillac a Philosopher of Sensations. VOLTAIRE; ROUSSEAU.--The French philosophy of the eighteenth century, fairly feeble it must be avowed, seemed as if dominated by the English philosophy, excepting Berkeley, but especially by Locke and David Hume, more particularly Locke, who was the intellectual deity of those Frenchmen of that epoch who were interested in philosophy. Whenever Voltaire dealt with philosophy, he was only the echo of Locke whose depths he failed to fathom, and to whom he has done some injury, for reading Locke only through Voltaire has led to the belief that Locke was superficial. Rousseau was both the disciple and adversary of Hobbes, as often occurs, and dealt out to the public the doctrines of Hobbes in an inverted form, making the state of nature angelic instead of infernal, and putting the government of all by all in the place of government by one, invariably reaching the same point with a simple difference of form; for if Hobbes argued for despotism exercised by one over all, Rousseau argued for the despotism of all over each. In _Emile_, he was incontestably inspired by the ideas of Locke on education in some degree, but in my opinion less than has been asserted. On nearly all sides it has been asserted that Rousseau exercised great influence over Kant. I know that Kant felt infinite admiration for Rousseau, but of the influence of Rousseau upon Kant I have never been able to discover a trace.