country, sends orders from his office to Surat and Aleppo, and
contributes to the happiness of the world?
COMMON SENSE.
There is sometimes in vulgar expressions an image of what passes in the
heart of all men. "_Sensus communis_" signified among the Romans not
only common sense, but also humanity and sensibility. As we are not
equal to the Romans, this word with us conveys not half what it did with
them. It signifies only good sense--plain, straightforward
reasoning--the first notion of ordinary things--a medium between dulness
and intellect. To say, "that man has not common sense," is a gross
insult; while the expression, "that man has common sense," is an affront
also; it would imply that he was not quite stupid, but that he wanted
intellect. But what is the meaning of common sense, if it be not sense?
Men, when they invented this term, supposed that nothing entered the
mind except by the senses; otherwise would they have used the word
"sense" to signify the result of the common faculty of reason?
It is said, sometimes, that common sense is very rare. What does this
expression mean? That, in many men, dawning reason is arrested in its
progress by some prejudices; that a man who judges reasonably on one
affair will deceive himself grossly in another. The Arab, who, besides
being a good calculator, was a learned chemist and an exact astronomer,
nevertheless believed that Mahomet put half of the moon into his sleeve.
How is it that he was so much above common sense in the three sciences
above mentioned, and beneath it when he proceeded to the subject of half
the moon? It is because, in the first case, he had seen with his own
eyes, and perfected his own intelligence; and, in the second, he had
used the eyes of others, by shutting his own, and perverting the common
sense within him.
How could this strange perversion of mind operate? How could the ideas
which had so regular and firm a footing in his brain, on many subjects,
halt on another a thousand times more palpable and easy to comprehend?
This man had always the same principles of intelligence in him; he must
have therefore possessed a vitiated organ, as it sometimes happens that
the most delicate epicure has a depraved taste in regard to a particular
kind of nourishment.
How did the organ of this Arab, who saw half of the moon in Mahomet's
sleeve, become disordered--By fear. It had been told him that if he did
not believe in this sleeve his soul, immediately after his death, in
passing over the narrow bridge, would fall forever into the abyss. He
was told much worse--if ever you doubt this sleeve, one dervish will
treat you with ignominy; another will prove you mad, because, having all
possible motives for credibility, you will not submit your superb reason
to evidence; a third will refer you to the little divan of a small
province, and you will be legally impaled.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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