To be calm and phlegmatic: that’s what was important.
None of that European excitability! None of that continental passion!
Clear, methodical prose! No wooliness! No wordiness! None of that European high falutin’ talk. None of that German ponderousness! And French baloney!
Soundness! Rigour! None of that continental mystery-mongering! None of that European obscurity! That across-the-Channel rhetoric! That intellectual trickery!
It was about bursting philosophical balloons rather than inflating them. About resisting the lure of abstraction. About distrusting theories.
Work in Progress 