Chapter II.
One of the fundamental and soundest canons of philosophy is this: never violently to subvert, but to follow gently through all its windings, any fact submitted to us by common sense, and never harshly to obliterate the language in which any such fact is expressed, or precipitately to substitute in place of it another expression, drawn, probably from some mushroom theory, and more consonant, as we may think, with truth, because apparently of a more cultivated cast. The presumption is, that the first expressions are right, and truly denote the fact, and that the secondary language, if much opposed to these, is the offspring of a philosophy erroneously reflective. In short, if we neglect the canon pointed out, the risk of our missing the real facts, and running into false speculation, is extreme. For common sense, being instinctive or nearly so, rarely errs, and its expressions, not being matured by reflection, generally contain within them, though under very obscure forms, much of the deep truth and wisdom of revelations. What though its facts and its language may often be to us, like the mirage to travellers in the desert, for a time an elusive and disappointing thing! Still let us persevere in the pursuit. The natural mirage is often the most benign provision which Heaven, in its mercy, could call up before the eyes of the wanderers through barren wastes. Ceaselessly holding out to them the promise of blessed gratification, it thus attracts onwards and onwards, till, at length, they really reach the true and water-flowing oasis, those steps which, but for this timely and continual attraction, would have sunk down and perished in despair amid the unmeasurable sands. And spread over the surface of common life, there is a moral mirage analogous to this, and equally attractive to the philosopher thirsting after truth. In pursuing it we may be often disappointed and at fault, but let us follow it in faithful hope, and it will lead us on and on unto the true and living waters at last. If we accept in a sincere and faithful spirit the facts and expressions of common sense, and refrain from tampering unduly with their simplicity, we shall perhaps find, like those fortunate ones of old who, opening hospitable doors to poor wearied wayfarers, unwittingly entertained angels, that we are harbouring the divinest truths of philosophy in the guise of these homely symbols.
It is comparatively an easy task to exclude such facts and such expressions from our consideration, and then within closed doors to arrive at conclusions at variance with common sense. But this is not the true business of philosophy. True philosophy, meditating a far higher aim, and a far more difficult task than this, throws wide her portals to the entrance of all comers,—come disguised and unpromising as they may. In other words, she accepts, as given, the great and indestructible convictions of our race, and the language in which these are expressed: and in place of denying or obliterating them, she endeavours rationally to explain and justify them; recovering by reflection steps taken in the spontaneous strength of nature by powers little more than instinctive, and seeing in clear light the operation of principles, which, in their primary acts, work in almost total darkness.
Common sense, then, is the problem of philosophy, and is plainly not to be solved by being set aside—but just as little is it to be solved by being taken for granted, or in other words, by being allowed to remain in the primary forms in which it is presented to our notice. A problem and its solution are evidently not one and the same thing; and hence, common sense, the problem of philosophy, is by no means identical, in the first instance at least, with the solution which philosophy has to supply: (a consideration which those would do well to remember who talk of the "philosophy of common sense," thus confounding together the problem and the solution.) It is only after the solution has been effected, that they can be looked upon as identical with each other. How then is this solution to be realized? How is the conversion of common sense into philosophy to be brought about? We answer, by accepting completely and faithfully the facts and expressions of common sense as given in their primitive obscurity, and then by construing them without violence, without
