Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/705

Rh ," as to matters on which there seems no room for difference of opinion, because every sane person comes to the same conclusion, although he may he able to give no other reason for it than that it appears to him "self-evident." Thus, while philosophers have raised a thick cloud of dust in the discussion of the basis of our belief in the existence of a world external to ourselves—of the Non-Ego, as distinct from the Ego—and while every logician claims to have found some flaw in the proof advanced by every other, the common-sense of mankind has arrived at a decision that is practically worth all the arguments of all the philosophers who have fought again and again over this battle-ground. And I think it can be shown that the trustworthiness of this common-sense decision arises from its dependence, not on any one set of experiences, but upon our unconscious coordination of the whole aggregate of our experiences—not on the conclusiveness of any one train of reasoning, but on the convergence of all our lines of thought toward this one centre.

Now, this "common-sense," disciplined and enlarged by appropriate culture, becomes one of our most valuable instruments of scientific inquiry; affording in many instances the best, and sometimes the only, basis for a rational conclusion. Let us take as a typical case, in which no special knowledge is required, what we are accustomed to call the "flint implements" of the Abbeville and Amiens gravel-beds. No logical proof can be adduced that the peculiar shapes of these flints were given to them by human hands; but does any unprejudiced person now doubt it? The evidence of design, to which, after an examination of one or two such specimens, we should only be justified in attaching a probable value, derives an irresistible cogency from accumulation. On the other hand, the improbability that these flints acquired their peculiar shape by accident becomes to our minds greater and greater as more and more such specimens are found; until at last this hypothesis, although it cannot be directly disproved, is felt to be almost inconceivable, except by minds previously "possessed" by the "dominant idea" of the modern origin of man. And thus what was in the first instance a matter of discussion has now become one of those "self-evident" propositions which claim the unhesitating assent of all whose opinion on the subject is entitled to the least weight.

We proceed upward, however, from such questions as the common-sense of mankind generally is competent to decide, to those in which special knowledge is required to give value to the judgment; and thus the interpretation of Nature by the use of that faculty comes to be more and more individual; things being perfectly "self-evident" to men of special culture which ordinary men, or men whose training has lain in a different direction, do not apprehend as such. Of all departments of science, geology seems to me to be the one that most depends on this specially-trained "common-sense;" which brings as it were into one focus the light afforded by a great variety of studies—physical