DR. LUDWIG STEIN ON THE ENGLISH.

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THE MOST PRACTICAL PEOPLE

IN THE WORLD.

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Professor Dr. Ludwig Stein, the Dean of the Philosophical Faculty at Berne University, and author of several philosophical and sociological works, who has also translated the autobiography of Herbert Spencer into German, delivered a lecture recently at Berne on "The English Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century."

The Professor's introductory words are given as follows in the "Anglo-German Courier" :—
 "Englishmen have always been realists, and have never indulged in dreams. While we Germans, were dreaming in our studies and building philosophical empires Englishmen sent their ships out to conquer empires. . . . .
"The English standpoint in philosophy has always been that the individual is real and not the universal ; the individual is the chief thing in the State ; the individual is the aim and the State is the means. Therefore, in England there was never an idolising of the social classes and of the State, as exists still on the Continent. According to English ideas, the individual always has been the central point with regard to economy, religion, and politics. Pronounced individualism is to the present day the most characteristic trait in English philosophy. English philosophy is but little occupied with 'transcendental' questions. The Englishman fulfils his religious duties on Sunday ; during the week he does not trouble himself about abstract questions.
 "One must be careful not to judge the character of the English people by the foolish, commonplace remarks that are so often spread about them. One must not think that the Englishman, with his disagreeable qualities we so often see in Switzerland, is the true type of the Englishman. This would be quite wrong. The impolite inconsiderate Englishmen we often see here are mostly parvenus — tailors or bootmakers, who, having got rich are making their Switzerland trip. He who sees the Englishman in his home is enchanted with his politeness and distinction. Of course, like all distinguished people, the Englishman of this type is reserved. In the English people there is a sound and sensible national vigour— the vigour of an ambitious man, who goes straight forward towards his goal without troubling himself about insoluble questions. This is his principle in life and philosophy.
 "In all the works of English thinkers there is splendid lucidity. We must never forget what we owe to the English people. Englishmen have solved the mystery of how to make a revolution — not a riot, but a total reorganisation of the State. An Englishman gave first to the world Magna Charta and the Habeas Corpus Act — those grand guarantees for individual freedom. . . . Who gave us the new physics ? Roger Bacon foreshadowed it in the thirteenth century ; then Newton ; in the nineteenth century, Herschel, Faraday, Maxwell, Crooks. Who gave us the new chemistry ? Boyle. Who showed new methods in medical science ? Harvey, the discoverer of the blood. Who made the great discoveries in biology ? Erasmus and Charles Darwin ; after them Hooker, Huxley, Wallace.
" England has also produced great poets. Think of Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, and Shelley. With regard to the other arts, think of the painters —Whistler, Turner, Beardsley, Alma Tadema, and the Pre-Raphaelites. In literature the names of Carlyle, Ruskin, and Walter Pater are in the first rank. To the greatest historians of all times belong Buckle, Gibbon, and Macaulay. In philosophy England is not behind any cultured nation. All great systems have their representatives in England— inductive logic in Bacon, materialism in Hobbes, the constitution on representative principles, the new psychology, the theory of knowledge in Locke, psychology also in Hartley and Priestley, idealism in Berkeley, scepticism in Hume. The most practical people in the world gave us the most practical science. Classical political economy was created, by Adam Smith, Ricardo, Malthus. In the nineteenth century there follow them Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, the men who understood the Positivism of August Comte incomparably better than Frenchmen themselves. In John Stuart Mill there are united all the chief traits of the character of the English people as in a cone of light."

Penshurst Free Press (Vic. : 1901 - 1918), Friday 20 July 1906, page 1