Such a system, by its nature and aims, is evidently practical; it is directed towards a change of laws and an alteration of the prevailing methods of government. To the philosophic minds of the eighteenth-century reformers in England and France, it seemed evident, that any general conclusions upon questions vitally concerning the interests of mankind should be reached by convincing demonstration, should start from axioms, and proceed by a connected chain of logical argument. During the latter half of that century England and France, so incessantly at war and so different in character and in their governing institutions, were nevertheless in alliance intellectually. They were then (with Holland) the only countries in the world where public opinion had free play, and where discussion of philosophic problems was actively carried on; and between them there was a constant interchange of ideas. Now in all speculations, on things human or divine, there have existed immemorially two schools or tendencies of thought, two ways of approaching the subject, corresponding, we may conjecture, to a radical difference of intellectual predispositions. You may start by the high _a priori_ road, or you may feel your way gradually by induction from verifiable experiences; and of these two main currents of speculative opinion whichever is the stronger at any given period will affect every branch of thought and action. Coleridge appealed to history as proving that all epoch-making revolutions coincide with the rise or fall of metaphysical systems, and he attributed the power of abstract theories over revolutionary movements to the craving of man for higher guidance than sensations. However this may be, it may be affirmed that the rationalism of the eighteenth century in England and France found room by replacing the decaying theologies and substituting reason for the traditional authority. This was the period that produced in France the philosophic conception of abstract humanity, everywhere the same naturally, with a superficial distinction of circumstances, but differentiated in the main by bad laws, artificial inequalities, and social injustice. In France the method of deducing conclusions from abstract principles concerning the rights of man and the social compact gained predominance, until they were shaped by Rousseau and others into the formal indictment of a corrupt society. It was the point and impulse thus given to very real grievances and irritation against privilege, that precipitated the French Revolution. Among the English, on the other hand, their public spirit, the connection of large classes with national affairs, and their habit of compromise, had predisposed the leading minds towards cautious views in philosophy and in politics; and at the century's end their inbred distrust of abstract propositions as a basis for social reconstruction received startling confirmation from the tremendous explosion in France.