For example, Dr. McCosh, a
thorough-going opponent, regards Mill's influence as the most
active and effective philosophical force now alive in Great
Britain, the strongest current of philosophic thought even at
Oxford; and M. Taine, who some years ago discovered at Oxford
that the British nation was not wanting in "general ideas" or
principles in its modes of thought above the requirements of the
accountant and assayer, found these principles in a really living
English philosophy, which has brought forth one of M. Taine's
most elaborate critical studies in his work on "Intelligence." In
contrast with these estimates, we have from Mr. Mill himself the
opinion, in a letter to M. Taine, that his views are not
especially English, and that they have not been so since the
philosophical reaction in Scotland, Germany, and later in England,
against Hume; that when his "System of Logic" was written he "stood
almost alone in his opinions; and though they have met with a degree
of sympathy which he by no means expected, we may still count in
England twenty _a priori_ and spiritualist philosophers for every
partisan of the doctrine of Experience.
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