om the scholastic barbarism of the style, partly 'my utter inability
to comprehend the author's meaning.' He recognises similarity between
Kant and Reid, but thinks Reid's simple statement of the fact that space
cannot be derived from the senses more philosophical than Kant's
'superstructure of technical mystery.'[200]

I have dwelt upon the side in which Stewart's philosophy approximates to
the empirical school, because the Utilitarians were apt to misconceive
the position. They took Stewart to be the adequate representative of all
who accepted one branch of an inevitable dilemma. The acceptance of
'intuitions,' that is, was the only alternative to thoroughgoing
acceptance of 'experience.' They supposed, too, that persons vaguely
described as 'Kant and the Germans' taught simply a modification of the
'intuitionist' view. I have noticed how emphatically Stewart claimed to
rely upon experience and to base his philosophy upon inductive
psychology, and was so far admitting the first principles and the
general methods of his opponents. The Scottish philosophy, however,
naturally presented itself as an antagonistic force to the Utilitarians.
The 'intuitions' represented the ultimate ground taken, especially in
religious and ethical questions, by men who wished to be at once liberal
philosophers and yet to avoid revolutionary extremes. 'Intuitions' had
in any case a negative value, as protests against the sufficiency of the
empirical analysis. It might be quite true, for example, that Hume's
analysis of certain primary mental phenomena--of our belief in the
external world or of the relation of cause and effect--was radically
insufficient. He had not given an adequate explanation of the facts. The
recognition of the insufficiency of his reasoning was highly important
if only as a stimulus to inquiry. It was a warning to his and to
Hartley's followers that they had not thoroughly unravelled the
perplexity but only cut the knot. But when the insufficiency of the
explanation was interpreted as a demonstration that all explanation was
impossible, and the 'intuition' an ultimate 'self-evident' truth, it
became a refusal to inquire just where inquiry was wanted; a positive
command to stop analysis at an arbitrary point; and a round assertion
that the adversary could not help believing precisely the doctrine which
he altogether declined to believe. Naturally the empiricists refused to
bow to an authority which was simply saying, 'Don'