In politics, therefore, as well as in philosophy, the prevailing habit of the English mind was more moderate, less thorough-going and subversive, than in France. Mr. Stephen makes a keen and rapid analysis of the common-sense psychology, as expounded by Reid and Dugald Stewart, to show the correspondence at this period between abstract reasoning and concrete political views, and to illustrate the limitations which cautious Scotch professors endeavoured to place upon the inexorable scepticism of Hume. The general spirit of their teaching was empirical, but the logical consequence of taking experience as the sole foundation of belief was evidently to cut off the hidden springs of moral consciousness, and to support the derivation of ethics from utility. In philosophy, as in politics, there was a sympathetic recoil from extremes. So common sense was brought in as capable of certain intuitive or original judgments which were in themselves necessary, and which luckily coincided with some of the firmest convictions among intelligent mankind. As Carlyle said long afterwards, the Scottish philosophers started from the mechanical premises suggested by Hume. 'They let loose instinct as an indiscriminatory bandog to guard them against his conclusions; they tugged lustily against the logical chain by which Hume was so coldly towing them and the world into bottomless abysses of atheism and fatalism.' To save themselves from materialism they invented Intuitions, and thereby incurred the wrath of orthodox Utilitarianism, which was rigidly empirical. They were, however, accepted in England, where any haven was welcome, however uncertain might be the holding ground, which sheltered the vessel from being blown by windy speculation out into a shoreless sea. The Scottish philosophy therefore 'was in philosophy what Whiggism was in politics. Like political Whiggism, it included a large element of enlightened and liberal rationalism; but, like Whiggism, it covered an aversion to thorough-going logic. The English politician was suspicious of abstract principle, but would cover his acceptance of tradition and rule of thumb by general phrases about liberty and toleration. The Whig in philosophy equally accepted the traditional creed, sufficiently purified from cruder elements, and sheltered his doctrine by speaking of intuitions and laws of thought.'