ABSTRACT
America is part of Euro-American civilization, and American intellectual history is part of Euro-American intellectual history, and cannot be understood apart from it. As an element in this general hypothesis I conjecture that John Rae, Thorstein Veblen, and Harold Innis cannot be understood apart from the content of Common Sense Scottish Philosophy. Their environment in America occasioned new departures, and controlled what they accepted from Europe, but what they accepted was from Europe, and their new departures were from a European base.
