ABSTRACT
Frankly, the Anglo-Saxon Tradition again came close, with Newton, to Continental Humanism and to that neat rationalism that finds its expression in the French spirit. Newton, with his rational clarity, spoke a language that Voltaire could understand, while the great observer, who was also Protestant pietist, could sympathize with Voltaire in his impatient protest against ces impertinences scholastiques. The characteristic of the Eighteenth Century had been a belief in Reason happily espoused to Common-sense. About Pragmatism, however, Utilitarianism's later variation, it is necessary to speak more at length. The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries had seen great strides in the development of Mathematics and of Physics. The distinctive Anglo-Saxon experimental philosophy, even in its pragmatic form, affirms that there is an objective reality; to that we must submit and we must study it before we can control it.
