SENSE

SENSE, Common, is a term that has been variously used both by ancient and modern writers. With some it has been synonymous with public sense; with others it has denoted prudence: in certain instances, it has been confounded with some of the powers of taste; and, accordingly, those who commit egregious blunders with regard to decorum, saying and doing what is offensive to their company, and inconsistent with their own character, have been charged with a defect in common sense. Some men are distinguished by an uncommon acuteness in discovering the characters of others; and this talent has been sometimes called common sense: similar to which is that use of the term, which makes it to signify that experience and knowledge of life which is acquired by living in society. To this meaning Quintilian refers, speaking of the advantages of a public education: Sensum ipsum qui communis dicitur, ubi disset, cum se a congressu, qui non hominibus solum, sed mutis quoque animalibus naturalis est, segregarit? Lib. i. cap. 2. But the term common sense hath in modern times been used to signify that power of the mind which perceives truth, or commands belief, not by progressive argumentation, but by an instantaneous, instinctive, and irresistible impulse; derived neither from education nor from habit, but from nature; acting independently of our will, whenever its object is presented, according to an established law, and therefore called sense; and acting in a similar manner upon all, or at least upon a great majority of mankind, and therefore called common sense. The first among the moderns, who took notice of this principle as one of the springs of our knowledge, was Buffier, a French philosopher of the present century, in a book entitled Traité des premières verités; and this doctrine hath lately, in our Sense. our own country, been illustrated and maintained by Drs Reid, Beattie, Oswald, and Campbell. Serpents. Beattie, and Oswald; also Edinburgh Magazine and Review for the year 1775. In order to evince, that there is a real and essential difference between this faculty and that of reason, it is observed, that we are conscious, from internal feeling, that the energy of understanding, which perceives intuitive truth, is different from that other energy which unites a conclusion with a first principle, by a gradual chain of intermediate relations: that we cannot discern any necessary connection between reason and common sense: that the one is more in our power than the other; the faculty of reasoning being improvable by culture; whereas common sense, like other instincts, arrives at maturity with almost no care of ours, and it is impossible to teach common sense to one who wants it; though this, like other instincts, may languish for want of exercise: and that a distinction, similar to that which is here maintained, is acknowledged by the vulgar, who speak of mother-wit, as something different from the deductions of reason, and the refinements of science. All sound reasoning, it is said, must ultimately rest on the principles of common sense; that is, on principles intuitively certain, or intuitively probable; and, consequently, common sense is the ultimate judge of truth, to which reason must continually act in subordination. Thus the advocates for this faculty, as an original and distinct power of the human mind, assign to it a very extensive empire, and an authority that is supreme and absolute. And they have proceeded so far, as to substitute in the room of Mr Locke's abstraction, this faculty, as the characteristic of rationality. To this they refer the evidence of mathematical truth, of external and internal sense, of memory, of reasoning from the effect to the cause, of probable or experimental reasoning, of analogical reasoning, of faith in testimony, and, indeed, of all primary truths. To common sense, therefore, all truth must be conformable; this, they say, is its fixed and invariable standard. And whatever contradicts common sense, or is inconsistent with that standard, though supported by arguments that are deemed unanswerable, and by names that are celebrated by all the critics, academics, and potentates on earth, is not truth, but falsehood. In a word, the dictates of common sense are, in respect to human knowledge, in general, what the axioms of geometry are in respect to mathematics: on the supposition that these axioms are false or dubious, all mathematical reasoning falls to the ground; and on the supposition that the dictates of common sense are erroneous or deceitful, all truth, virtue, and science, are vain. And hence it appears, that according to this system, common sense is not only the test of truth, but the standard of moral obligation. See Reid's Enquiry into the Human Mind, on the Principles of Common Sense, 8vo, ed. 2. 1765. Beattie's Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, 8vo, ed. 2. 1771. Oswald's Appeal to Common Sense in behalf of Religion, 8vo, ed. 2. 1768. Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric, 8vo, 1776, vol. i. p. 109, &c. This system has been attacked by Dr Priestley; who has again been replied to (by Dr Blacklock, if we are not misinformed) in a late periodical publication at Edinburgh. See Priestley's Examination of Reid,