Is there any objection to calling this inclination common sense? For myself, I shall not dispute upon words; I mark the fact, and this is all I need do in philosophy. I grant that the inclination to assent is not, in treating of immediate evidence, usually called common sense, and this not without a reason. In order that the word sense may be properly applied to it, the understanding ought to feel rather than know: but in immediate evidence it knows rather than feels. However this may be, I repeat that the name is of no account; yet, it would not be difficult to find this criterion of truth called by grave authors _common sense_. What I wish is to establish this law of our nature inclining us to give our assent to certain truths, independently of consciousness and ratiocination. 318. Not immediate evidence alone has this irresistible inclination in its favor; mediate evidence also has it. Our understanding necessarily assents, not only to first principles, but also to all propositions clearly connected with them. The natural inclination to assent is not limited to the subjective value of ideas; it also extends to their objective value. We have already seen that this objectiveness is not directly demonstrable _a priori_, and yet we stand in need of it. If our understanding is not to be limited to a purely ideal and subjective world, we must know not only that things _seem_ to us, as they do with mediate or immediate evidence, but also that they really _are_ such as they seem to be. It is then necessary to assent to the objectiveness of ideas, and we find within ourselves an irresistible and universal inclination to such an assent. 319. What we have said of immediate and mediate evidence relatively to the objective value of ideas, is true, not only in the purely intellectual, but also in the moral order. The soul, endowed as it is with free will, needs rules for its direction: if first intellectual principles are necessary in order to know, moral principles are not less so in order to will and work. What truth and error are to the understanding, good and evil are to the will. Besides the life of the understanding, there is a life of the will; the one, without principles on which to rest, is annihilated; the other, as a moral being, perishes, or becomes an inconceivable absurdity, if it have no rule, the observation or violation of which constitutes its perfection or imperfection. Here is another necessity for the assent to certain moral truths, and another reason of this irresistible and universal inclination to assent. I would here remark, that as it is not enough in the intellectual order to know, but it is also necessary to act, and one of the principles of action is perception by the senses; so moral truths are not only known but felt. When they are offered to the mind the understanding assents to them as unshaken, and the heart embraces them with enthusiasm and love.