Common good sense has a real apprehension of innumerable things which those who add to good sense learning and reflection may comprehend; but there is much that must for ever remain matter only of real apprehension to the best seers; that is to say, everything in which the infinite has a part, _i.e._ all religion, all virtue as distinguished from temporary expediency, the grounds of all true art, etc. A man may have an immense acquaintance with facts; he may have all history and the whole circle of the sciences on the tip of his tongue; he may be the author of a classical system of logic, or may have so cunningly elaborated a false theory of nature as to puzzle and infuriate the wisest of men: and yet may not really apprehend any part of the truth of life which is properly human knowledge. At the present time it is by politics chiefly that the difference between the two great classes of men is made apparent. For the first time in English history, party limitations coincide almost exactly with the limitations which separate silly from sensible men. If you talk with a sincere Gladstonian--and, wonderful to say, there are still many such--you will soon find that he has no real apprehension of anything. He only feebly and foolishly opines. It is not to be concluded from what has been said that the possession of the apprehending faculty in any way supersedes the good of learning. The power of really apprehending is nothing in the absence of realities to be apprehended. In the great field of ordinary social relationships and duties the subject-matter of such apprehension is largely supplied by individual experience, and the exercise by most men of that faculty is in the main limited to these; so that the praise of “good sense” has acquired a much narrower signification than it ought to bear. Genius is nothing but great good sense, or real apprehension, exercised upon objects more or less out of common sight; and the chief ingredient of even the highest and most heroic sanctity is the same apprehension taking hold upon spiritual truths and applying them to the conduct of the interior as well as the exterior life. Men with great strength of real apprehension are easily capable of things which inferior characters regard as great self-sacrifices; though to them such things are no more sacrifice than in an ordinary man it would be to exchange a ton of lead for a pound of gold. “Their hearts do not forget the things their eyes have seen;” and persons like General Gordon or Sir Thomas More would stare if you called anything they did or suffered by the name of sacrifice.