ABSTRACT
‘I am an Englishman, and cannot generalize.’ There is a great deal of truth in this simple declaration of incapacity, used as a defensive counterblast to the facile power of drawing plausible systems of logic or philosophy from masses of heterogeneous facts, which is the pride of our Latin and Teutonic neighbours. We are individualists and opportunists both in thought and in action—dislike general propositions and love exceptions, believe in things practical, have no objection to compromises, are content to ‘get on somehow’, or ‘to muddle through’, being, as the Frenchman said, ‘sans logique mais grands improvisateurs’.
