ABSTRACT
It is the more striking that the common-sense world with its things, classes, and laws, should consist of phenomena, that it has all been felt and lived, growing for us with our growing grasp, and that no belief is imported that is not an expectation of which sense can give proof. For animals this world is free from reflection and language; and, in spite of both taints, ours can be seen in quite the same practical character. Common sense is not so guilty as its language appears to say. It stands a poor examination on the meaning of simple words like thing, is, has, I, act. But it learns them not as definitions but as physical signs; it knows nothing of them but their applications; and so their implication is felt as merely a mutual analogy among the instances. When it says ‘this thing has an odour’, there need be nothing vague, let alone an error. When it says ‘a stone broke the window’, there need be no confusion till it is cross-examined; it is saved from confusion, as well as from error, by its ignorance.
