Page:Essays in Philosophy (1856).djvu/110

 There are two statements connected with this doctrine which should be carefully noted and reflected on by the metaphysical student. Of these the one is a question of terminology, and relates to the precise object, or collection of objects, that is signified by the technical term “common sense,” when it is used as the term expressive of the proper province of his science. The other is a question of scientific method, and enforces the necessity of the labour of analysis and criticism for the discovery and arrangement of the genuine principles of common sense, purified from the prejudices and conventionalisms with which they are apt to be confounded, and by which they are almost always marred.

Common sense, as a term of science in metaphysics, expresses those notions and beliefs which are essential to man regarded as an intellectual and moral being. The existence of such original convictions is assumed when man is declared to be capable of collecting knowledge from experience; but they are not themselves built up of the materials of experience. Reflective induction may observe and systematize them, but it is not as the results of induction that they have gained an entrance into the mind. The phrase Common Sense, when used in the higher philosophy, is to be entirely dissociated from its more vague and popular meanings, in which it expresses natural prudence, or acquired skill in the management of common affairs and in the intercourse of society. These unscientific significations, while they are expres-