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
