 Seth does not say who it is he has in mind, but a knowledge of the period makes it relatively easy to surmise. In fact Seth himself (he changed his name to Seth Pringle-Pattison in 1898) was for a time identified as one in virtue of being joint editor with R B Haldane of Essays in Philosophical Criticism (1883). This volume came to be regarded as the Scottish Idealists' philosophical manifesto, though Seth in his second set of Balfour Lectures Hegelianism and Personality registered a fundamental disagreements with the Idealists. The reference to “a German stamp”, however, may be somewhat misleading. An interest in, and a knowledge of, Kant can be found to go back to Hamilton, and far from being regarded as a threat to the Scottish tradition was recognized (by Veitch, for instance) as an important part of its enrichment. The German philosophy referred to here, then, is that which emanated from Hegel.