SCHOOL. NATURAL INTELLIGENCE AND CONCRETE EVIDENCE.

On the meaning of the expressions " common sense " and

" truths of common sense," a further word of explanation is,

however, necessary. They have been used extensively by certain

philosophers of the Scottish school, notably by Reid (1/10-96),

Oswald (1727-93), Beattie (1735-1803), and Dtigald Stewart

(1753-1828). Against the scepticism of Hume, for instance, Reid

emphasizes the futility and unreasonableness of questioning " prin

ciples that are self-evident," principles of which " every man who

has common sense is a competent judge ". 1 Now by " common

sense " Reid meant simply what is sometimes also described as

" good sense " or the faculty of sound judgment : in other words

human reason or intelligence as brought to bear, in its sane and

normal functioning, on the objective evidence whereby a large

collection of convictions is borne in upon men generally as

objectively true. And this aggregate of primordial convictions

1 Reid s Works, ed. by Hamilton, p. 442, apud TURNER, History of Philosophy,

p. 594.

20 *

3o8 THEOR V OF KNO WLEDGE

or principles or " truths of common sense " (i.e. truths reached by

the functioning of the faculty called "common sense") has been

sometimes itself described by metonymy as " common sense,"

i.e. the collective common sense of the human race. Subjectively,

then, " common sense " would mean simply the individual s in

tellectual faculty appreciating the immediate objective evidence

furnished by the data submitted to it by experience ; and ob

jectively it would mean the collection of judgments reached by

our intellectual apprehension of their immediate, intrinsic, objec

tive evidence. Now it is clear that to set down " common

sense " in the former meaning as the faculty whereby the in

dividual must ultimately discern truth from falsity is to give

expression to the traditional teaching of scholasticism. And it

is equally clear that to set down "common sense" in the latter

meaning as the supreme objective test of truth and ultimate

motive of certitude is also to repeat in a different terminology

the scholastic teaching in regard to the respective roles of ob

jective evidence and " common assent " (the " sensus communis

humani generis," the "consentement commun " of De Lamennais)

in determining the assent of the individual reason to judgments

as certainly and evidently true. The only reserve to be made in

regard to the teaching of the Scottish philosophers is that in their

reaction against the scepticism of Hume they advocated a some

what excessive dogmatism in claiming that those " self-evident

principles " of " common sense " should be totally exempted from

all critical questioning.

But not all of the convictions universally entertained by

mankind (15), and usually described as "truths of common

sense," l are self-evident, or immediately evident, or impose them

selves cogently on the mind of the individual like the axioms of

mathematics or the abstract principles of logic and metaphysics.

Some of them are convictions which can be and are de facto

reached by the ordinary man, not through a perception of them

as self-evidently true, nor " by any sustained and elaborate train

of logical reasoning " (i 5) from abstract self-evident principles,

"but by an easy, direct, and half-unconscious movement" of

thought whereby they are interpreted as evidently credible or

worthy of the full and certain assent of a prudent man, a man

endowed with " common sense " or a sound faculty of judgment."

This argues that adequate intellectual evidence of their truth is

1 Cf. supra, p. 304, n. - Cf. vol. i., 15, pp. 59-61, 63-4.

TRUTHS OF " COMMON SENSE " 309

objectively forthcoming, even although they " have not the self-

evidence of axioms on the one hand, nor admit of the rigorous

demonstration of a theorem of geometry on the other". 1 It

means that the human intellect, confronted with the data of

human experience (both of the self and of the external universe),

and considering the facts of this experience in their entire con

crete context, can and does see in it grounds for certain judg

ments or interpretations of its significance, grounds which intel

lect rightly regards as reasonably sufficient to warrant an assent

of certitude to those judgments even though these grounds be

incapable of such adequate verbal formulation as would do full

justice to their evidential value.

It is this difficulty of explicitly formulating the evidence in

such cases, and of analysing satisfactorily the complex, cumu

lative process through which it determines intellectual assent,

that has prompted many writers to postulate special innate in

clinations in the intellect to form such assents (15), or to appear

to postulate a special "sense" or "instinct" for attaining to

them, 2 or to speak of them as "instinctive," "innate," "in

born," etc. (15). What we may call the purely logical use of

the intellect in apprehending the truth of cogently self-evi

dent abstract axioms and deductively demonstrated abstract

conclusions from such axioms, is consciously different from

its function of apprehending and assenting to certain other

judgments of " common sense," the truth of which it sees to be

necessarily implied in its actual cognitive experience : to such

judgments, for instance, as that reality is in some measure in

telligible, that the mind is capable of attaining and does attain

to some true knowledge, that there is a uniformity or orderliness

in the universe, that it is possible to distinguish between dream

ing and waking experience, that not all reputed knowledge is

illusion, that there is a morally right and a morally wrong in

human conduct, that the sensible is not co-extensive with the

real, that man himself and the visible universe are not self-existent

or self-explaining, but dependent on some Higher Power, to whom,

therefore, man owes the natural duty of religious worship, and

so forth. These assents, or some of them, may be called " beliefs "

(6) or " postulates " ; but, however they be designated, the im

portant point to note is this, that it is by his intellectual faculty

as a rational, reflecting being, that man gives these assents, and

Vol. i., 67, p. 234 n. "Ibid.

3 1 o THE OR Y OF KNO W LEDGE

only in virtue of objective grounds or motives which are directly

or indirectly evidential (148). If this is recognized and admitted

there can be no danger of misunderstanding in describing such

function of the intellect as " instinctive " or " natural " or " spon

taneous," any more than there is in Newman s terminology when

in his Grammar of Assent he speaks of " Natural Inference " and

the " Illative Sense ". But if it is denied that such assents are

given by the individual reason, if it is maintained that they are

given without any reference to the voice or dictate of reason,

that they are not amenable to the bar of reflecting reason, that

reason is powerless to pronounce them to be objectively true and

valid interpretations of reality, then, in the mind of a being en

dowed with reason they are inevitably doomed to wither into

scepticism.

The spontaneous beliefs that are universally prevalent in

the human race include certain elementary moral and religious

convictions 1 which the individual usually receives on authority:

convictions as to his own nature and destiny, such as belief in

human freedom and responsibility, in ethical distinctions and

ethical sanctions, in life after death, in the dependence of the

universe on the Ruling Power of a Divinity, and in man s sub

jection to this Divinity. It is not contended that in the various

forms assumed by these beliefs in the course of human history

they are unmixed with errors : it is only as to their substance

that they are universally prevalent. Nor is it contended that

even as to their substance they have the same sort of immediate

evidence, as e.g. mathematical axioms. The objects which they

present to the human intelligence are of a different order from

abstract thought-objects in the category of quantity. They are

judgments which have an intimate practical bearing on human

life and conduct. Their evidential appeal to the individual

human intelligence must therefore consist in the intellectually

apprehended fact that the real nature of man and the universe

as revealed in human experience, in other words the real

or ontological exigency of this experience (152-4), manifests

them to the individual intelligence as the true interpretations of

this experience. So far as the substance of these spontaneous

convictions is concerned, this evidence may rightly be said to be

immediate, for, as already observed, " it can hardly be denied

that they seem to come natural to the human intelligence, that

1 Cf. vol. i., 15, pp. 62-6.

they are felt to satisfy not only a moral and religious, but also

an intellectual need of our nature, that our reason promptly

appreciates the grounds of those beliefs, and is inclined spon

taneously and unquestioningly to accept those grounds as

satisfactory and convincing". 1 When we bring those spon

taneous judgments before the bar of reflecting reason, the fact

that in their substance they have received the universal spon

taneous assent of mankind will be strong presumptive evidence

that in substance they are objectively true. And, furthermore,

their spontaneously apprehended harmony with our whole nature,

not merely with our nature as intellectual or rational beings,

but with the religious and moral and esthetic yearnings and

needs and dictates of our nature, will likewise be rightly ad

judged by reason as part of the evidence on which we can base

a reasoned or reflex certitude of their truth. 2 How far the

natural, unaided reason of the individual can attain to such

certitude concerning them is a point to which we shall recur

presently (163). What we wish to observe here is that if reflec

tion on the general data of human experience were to lead

necessarily to the anti-intellectualist attitude 3 that the spontane

ous convictions on which religion and morality depend, convic

tions concerning God s existence, and human freedom and

immortality, cannot be apprehended by man s intellect to be

objectively true, or justified and vindicated on grounds of evidence

by man s reason reflecting on them, but must either be accepted

without adequate rational grounds (and merely to satisfy a blind,

instinctive "need" or "impulse" of our nature, or "will to

believe"), or else not be accepted at all, then reason could

hardly be prevented, as in fact it has not been prevented where

such an attitude prevails, from delivering as its final dictate the

verdict that ethical and religious beliefs are merely a matter of

personal feeling or sentiment, but that their objective and real

significance is unknown and unknowable. From such speculative

agnosticism the practical tendency of human nature is down

ward, towards materialism. Facilis descensus averni.

On the meaning of the expressions " common sense " and

" truths of common sense," a further word of explanation is,

however, necessary. They have been used extensively by certain

philosophers of the Scottish school, notably by Reid (1/10-96),

Oswald (1727-93), Beattie (1735-1803), and Dtigald Stewart

(1753-1828). Against the scepticism of Hume, for instance, Reid

emphasizes the futility and unreasonableness of questioning " prin

ciples that are self-evident," principles of which " every man who

has common sense is a competent judge ". 1 Now by " common

sense " Reid meant simply what is sometimes also described as

" good sense " or the faculty of sound judgment : in other words

human reason or intelligence as brought to bear, in its sane and

normal functioning, on the objective evidence whereby a large

collection of convictions is borne in upon men generally as

objectively true. And this aggregate of primordial convictions

1 Reid s Works, ed. by Hamilton, p. 442, apud TURNER, History of Philosophy,

p. 594.

20 *

3o8 THEOR V OF KNO WLEDGE

or principles or " truths of common sense " (i.e. truths reached by

the functioning of the faculty called "common sense") has been

sometimes itself described by metonymy as " common sense,"

i.e. the collective common sense of the human race. Subjectively,

then, " common sense " would mean simply the individual s in

tellectual faculty appreciating the immediate objective evidence

furnished by the data submitted to it by experience ; and ob

jectively it would mean the collection of judgments reached by

our intellectual apprehension of their immediate, intrinsic, objec

tive evidence. Now it is clear that to set down " common

sense " in the former meaning as the faculty whereby the in

dividual must ultimately discern truth from falsity is to give

expression to the traditional teaching of scholasticism. And it

is equally clear that to set down "common sense" in the latter

meaning as the supreme objective test of truth and ultimate

motive of certitude is also to repeat in a different terminology

the scholastic teaching in regard to the respective roles of ob

jective evidence and " common assent " (the " sensus communis

humani generis," the "consentement commun " of De Lamennais)

in determining the assent of the individual reason to judgments

as certainly and evidently true. The only reserve to be made in

regard to the teaching of the Scottish philosophers is that in their

reaction against the scepticism of Hume they advocated a some

what excessive dogmatism in claiming that those " self-evident

principles " of " common sense " should be totally exempted from

all critical questioning.

But not all of the convictions universally entertained by

mankind (15), and usually described as "truths of common

sense," l are self-evident, or immediately evident, or impose them

selves cogently on the mind of the individual like the axioms of

mathematics or the abstract principles of logic and metaphysics.

Some of them are convictions which can be and are de facto

reached by the ordinary man, not through a perception of them

as self-evidently true, nor " by any sustained and elaborate train

of logical reasoning " (i 5) from abstract self-evident principles,

"but by an easy, direct, and half-unconscious movement" of

thought whereby they are interpreted as evidently credible or

worthy of the full and certain assent of a prudent man, a man

endowed with " common sense " or a sound faculty of judgment."

This argues that adequate intellectual evidence of their truth is

1 Cf. supra, p. 304, n. - Cf. vol. i., 15, pp. 59-61, 63-4.

TRUTHS OF " COMMON SENSE " 309

objectively forthcoming, even although they " have not the self-

evidence of axioms on the one hand, nor admit of the rigorous

demonstration of a theorem of geometry on the other". 1 It

means that the human intellect, confronted with the data of

human experience (both of the self and of the external universe),

and considering the facts of this experience in their entire con

crete context, can and does see in it grounds for certain judg

ments or interpretations of its significance, grounds which intel

lect rightly regards as reasonably sufficient to warrant an assent

of certitude to those judgments even though these grounds be

incapable of such adequate verbal formulation as would do full

justice to their evidential value.

It is this difficulty of explicitly formulating the evidence in

such cases, and of analysing satisfactorily the complex, cumu

lative process through which it determines intellectual assent,

that has prompted many writers to postulate special innate in

clinations in the intellect to form such assents (15), or to appear

to postulate a special "sense" or "instinct" for attaining to

them, 2 or to speak of them as "instinctive," "innate," "in

born," etc. (15). What we may call the purely logical use of

the intellect in apprehending the truth of cogently self-evi

dent abstract axioms and deductively demonstrated abstract

conclusions from such axioms, is consciously different from

its function of apprehending and assenting to certain other

judgments of " common sense," the truth of which it sees to be

necessarily implied in its actual cognitive experience : to such

judgments, for instance, as that reality is in some measure in

telligible, that the mind is capable of attaining and does attain

to some true knowledge, that there is a uniformity or orderliness

in the universe, that it is possible to distinguish between dream

ing and waking experience, that not all reputed knowledge is

illusion, that there is a morally right and a morally wrong in

human conduct, that the sensible is not co-extensive with the

real, that man himself and the visible universe are not self-existent

or self-explaining, but dependent on some Higher Power, to whom,

therefore, man owes the natural duty of religious worship, and

so forth. These assents, or some of them, may be called " beliefs "

(6) or " postulates " ; but, however they be designated, the im

portant point to note is this, that it is by his intellectual faculty

as a rational, reflecting being, that man gives these assents, and

Vol. i., 67, p. 234 n. "Ibid.

3 1 o THE OR Y OF KNO W LEDGE

only in virtue of objective grounds or motives which are directly

or indirectly evidential (148). If this is recognized and admitted

there can be no danger of misunderstanding in describing such

function of the intellect as " instinctive " or " natural " or " spon

taneous," any more than there is in Newman s terminology when

in his Grammar of Assent he speaks of " Natural Inference " and

the " Illative Sense ". But if it is denied that such assents are

given by the individual reason, if it is maintained that they are

given without any reference to the voice or dictate of reason,

that they are not amenable to the bar of reflecting reason, that

reason is powerless to pronounce them to be objectively true and

valid interpretations of reality, then, in the mind of a being en

dowed with reason they are inevitably doomed to wither into

scepticism.

The spontaneous beliefs that are universally prevalent in

the human race include certain elementary moral and religious

convictions 1 which the individual usually receives on authority:

convictions as to his own nature and destiny, such as belief in

human freedom and responsibility, in ethical distinctions and

ethical sanctions, in life after death, in the dependence of the

universe on the Ruling Power of a Divinity, and in man s sub

jection to this Divinity. It is not contended that in the various

forms assumed by these beliefs in the course of human history

they are unmixed with errors : it is only as to their substance

that they are universally prevalent. Nor is it contended that

even as to their substance they have the same sort of immediate

evidence, as e.g. mathematical axioms. The objects which they

present to the human intelligence are of a different order from

abstract thought-objects in the category of quantity. They are

judgments which have an intimate practical bearing on human

life and conduct. Their evidential appeal to the individual

human intelligence must therefore consist in the intellectually

apprehended fact that the real nature of man and the universe

as revealed in human experience, in other words the real

or ontological exigency of this experience (152-4), manifests

them to the individual intelligence as the true interpretations of

this experience. So far as the substance of these spontaneous

convictions is concerned, this evidence may rightly be said to be

immediate, for, as already observed, " it can hardly be denied

that they seem to come natural to the human intelligence, that

1 Cf. vol. i., 15, pp. 62-6.

they are felt to satisfy not only a moral and religious, but also

an intellectual need of our nature, that our reason promptly

appreciates the grounds of those beliefs, and is inclined spon

taneously and unquestioningly to accept those grounds as

satisfactory and convincing". 1 When we bring those spon

taneous judgments before the bar of reflecting reason, the fact

that in their substance they have received the universal spon

taneous assent of mankind will be strong presumptive evidence

that in substance they are objectively true. And, furthermore,

their spontaneously apprehended harmony with our whole nature,

not merely with our nature as intellectual or rational beings,

but with the religious and moral and esthetic yearnings and

needs and dictates of our nature, will likewise be rightly ad

judged by reason as part of the evidence on which we can base

a reasoned or reflex certitude of their truth. 2 How far the

natural, unaided reason of the individual can attain to such

certitude concerning them is a point to which we shall recur

presently (163). What we wish to observe here is that if reflec

tion on the general data of human experience were to lead

necessarily to the anti-intellectualist attitude 3 that the spontane

ous convictions on which religion and morality depend, convic

tions concerning God s existence, and human freedom and

immortality, cannot be apprehended by man s intellect to be

objectively true, or justified and vindicated on grounds of evidence

by man s reason reflecting on them, but must either be accepted

without adequate rational grounds (and merely to satisfy a blind,

instinctive "need" or "impulse" of our nature, or "will to

believe"), or else not be accepted at all, then reason could

hardly be prevented, as in fact it has not been prevented where

such an attitude prevails, from delivering as its final dictate the

verdict that ethical and religious beliefs are merely a matter of

personal feeling or sentiment, but that their objective and real

significance is unknown and unknowable. From such speculative

agnosticism the practical tendency of human nature is down

ward, towards materialism. Facilis descensus averni.