The very calmness of the atmosphere only the more surely paved the way for the surprising novelties of Godwin and the revolutionists.
Nor must we neglect the relation between its ethics and its politics.
The eighteenth century school of British moralists has suffered somewhat beside the greater glories of Berkeley and Hume.

Yet it was a great work to which they bent their effort, and they knew its greatness.

The deistic controversy involved a fresh investigation of the basis of morals; and it is to the credit of the investigators that they attempted to provide it in social terms.

It is, indeed, one of the primary characteristics of the British mind to be interested in problems of conduct rather than of thought.

The seventeenth century had, for the most part, been interested in theology and government; and its preoccupation, in both domains, with supernatural sanctions, made its conclusions unfitted for a period dominated by rationalism.