England has been curiously served by her philosophers. Personally and in their first intention they have usually been sturdy Britons; but their scope has seldom been equal to their sagacity in particular matters, they have not divined the ultimate drift of their ideas, and they have often ended by adopting, a little blankly and doggedly, some foreign or fantastic system, apparently most inexpressive of John Bull. Nevertheless the exotic tendency in so many British philosophers, as in so many disaffected British poets, is itself a mark of the British character. The crust of convention has solidified too soon, and the suppressed fires issue in little erratic streams that seem of an alien substance. In speculation as in other things the Englishman trusts his inner man; his impulse is to soliloquize even in science. At the same time his inner man dislikes to be too articulate; he is soon at a stand in direct self-expression; and as a poet may take to describing nature or Italian passions, so a philosopher may pick up some alien doctrine that comes to hand, and that seems friendly to his mind; not understanding it very well, perhaps, in its native quality, but making it a living companion in his own lucubrations, and a symbol for what remains hidden but revered in his breast. In this way the Bible or Plato may serve him to found sects upon exclusively expressing his own feelings; or remaining a plain Englishman to all practical purposes, he may become, for his greater private satisfaction, a revolutionary atheist, a spiritualist, a Catholic, or a Buddhist. In such strange allegiances something may be due to wayward learning, or to genuine plasticity of mind and power to feel as very different souls have felt in other climes; but a part is unmistakable helplessness and dire need, and a part, perhaps, affectation. When his own resources fail, however, the most obvious easement and support for the English inner man are the classical and Anglican traditions he has been bred in, when these are not too nicely defined nor too slavishly followed. Most characteristic is John Bull the theologian, instinct with heresy and practising compromise; but the rationalistic John Bull is very like him in his alternative way of securing the same supreme object of thinking what he likes to think. In both cases he embraces his opinions much more because they are wholesome and important than because they are certain or clear. Opinions, he feels, should be summary and safe; they should express the lessons of experience.