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and alive still. During the Middle Ages the Popes themselves, in their various endeavours to re-unite the Eastern and Western Churches, were accustomed to say that the Church was divided as regards her members, but united as regards her faith. The last Pope who said this was Eugenius IV. in summoning the Council of Florence A.D. 1439, and when he said it there had been no intercommunion in the strict sense between the Eastern and Western Churches for at least four hundred years. On these principles, the Church is as much one now as then; the divisions which have occurred since have been equally confined to her members, and not affected her faith-not affected her faith, for the same creed, the only creed known to the Church, the Nicene, is professed everywhere, now as then; and Sacramental unity, though stunted and sickly for want of a common Eucharist, is by Baptism upheld in life. Intercommunion even now, on the highest Church principles, is all that is needed to make the objective unity of the Church complete.

How many crucial difficulties in Church history are thus solved unexpectedly by the teaching of the Popes themselves! Holy wars, and the indulgences attached to them, whether against Turk or heretic; the depositions of kings and emperors in and out of Council by Christian bishops; the whole question of investitures, and a vast deal more that was enacted in those Councils of Lateran, Lyons, and Vienne-justifiable measures, in some respects, it may be, for those days of feudal relations between Church and State, but all full of embarrassment, when the Catholic Church is made responsible for them in every age; not so the moment they are regarded as the work of a part of the Church only, and in the peculiar circumstances in which it was then placed. Diocesan, provincial, and still more national synods, in which kings sit as well as bishops, representing Church and State, therefore, conjointly, may in their wisdom order many things to be done for local or occasional emergencies, for which, on Church principles, one would think, few could desire to see the entire Church of Christ in all ages made responsible. I submit, then, that from this point of view alone, many more difficulties are solved by the theory that the Church of Rome is not the Catholic Church than by the theory that she is; and that the majesty of the Catholic Church is in fact infinitely more consulted by acknowledging her divisions than by misrepresenting her unity.

With this I take leave of Dr. Newman and his Essays, trusting that I have said nothing that can be construed into disrespect to him personally, nor unfair to his later as compared with his earlier judgments. Few of us that were at Oxford in his day have not been debtors to him in a hundred ways, many more than we could acknowledge, perhaps, if we wished it ever so. Nevertheless, in

the one act in which I followed him most, though certainly least at his instance, I am bound to say I have come to regard it as the greatest mistake of my life; and that it is my deliberate conviction in mature age, that for all who prize "truth for its own sake," there is no spiritual pasture more favourable to it anywhere than that of the Church of England.

At the same time, it is my conviction also that England is weak in point of argument against Rome without Greece, but would be with Greece invincible, for this simple reason: that Greece has never ceased to be true to the Nicene faith, has never added to it, and to this day knows of but one creed. Of that one creed the history is as transparent as crystal from beginning to end; no mystery, no myth, ever attached to its name; it comes to us on authority patent to all, and to which all on Church principles are bound to defer. These are points which are passed over in these Essays entirely; but it is on these grounds that I have no hesitation in professing, without any reserve, my desire to see an entente cordiale with all speed cstablished between England and Greece as regards creeds. EDMUND S. FFOULKES.

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"ME

EN rarely ask," says Dr. Reid, "what Common Sense is; because every man believes himself possessed of it, and would take it for an imputation upon his understanding to be thought unacquainted with it." Considering, however, that the study of the Mental operations which direct a very large part of our daily life is quite as important to a scientific Psychology as that of Logical formulæ, Ethical systems, or Absolute existence, I venture to hope that an attempt at a scientific analysis of those operations may not be regarded as an imputation upon the understanding of any of those to whom it is now submitted.

The term "Common Sense" has been used in so great a variety of acceptations (of which a most learned collection will be found in Sir William Hamilton's supplemental note to Dr. Reid's essay), that it is requisite to state, in limine, which of these I intend to make the basis of our discussion. No more concise, or at the same time comprehensive, account of its nature seems to me to have been given than that of Dr. Reid himself, when he says that the office of Common Sense, or the first degree of Reason, is to "judge of things self-evident," as contrasted with the office of Ratiocination, or the second degree of

*

The term "Ratiocination" is not used by Dr. Reid; but as he distinguishes the first degree of Reason by the term Common Sense, it seems desirable to employ a distinctive term for the second.

Reason, which is "to draw conclusions that are not self-evident from those that are." For although exception may be taken to the use of the verb "judge," where the "self-evident" character of the "things" cognosced seems to exclude any other possibility; yet, as I shall presently endeavour to show, a justification may be found for it in the history of the process by which that "self-evidence" comes to be recognised and accepted.

The distinction between "Common Sense," and "Ratiocination" or the "Discursive power," is regarded by Sir William Hamilton as equivalent to that which the Greek philosophers meant to indicate by the terms vous and diavola; and our colloquial use of the former, as corresponding to that cultivated Common Sense which is often distinguished as "good sense" is thereby justified.

There are, however, two principal forms of this capacity, which it is desirable clearly to distinguish :

The first is what the philosopher means by Common Sense, when he attributes to it the formation of those original convictions or ultimate beliefs, which cannot be resolved into simpler elements, and which are accepted by every normally-constituted Human being as direct cognitions of his own mental states. The existence of such "necessary truths," or "fundamental axioms," as a basis on which the whole fabric of our subsequently acquired knowledge is built up, is admitted alike by those who regard them as Intuitional, and by those who maintain that they are generalizations of Experience. We may take as examples of such universal deliverances of "Common Sense," our conviction of our own existence; our conviction of our own continuous individuality or personal identity; and our conviction of the existence of a world external to ourselves.

It is the second, however, which constitutes what is popularly meant by "Common Sense," as in the following passage from a recent newspaper article on the "Dangers of the London Season:"'Any builder for a few pounds may save us from the dangers of the sewers; but nothing short of unpurchasable common sense will preserve us from the deadly effects of our gaieties." This form of common sense, though the possession of Mankind in general, varies greatly, as to both range and degree, among different individuals; serving, however, to each as his guide in the ordinary affairs of life. That it is acquired in great part from experience, will probably be disputed by no one; but the capacity for acquiring it is by no means uniform. Inasmuch, moreover, as we no longer find its deliverances in constant accordance, but encounter continual divergencies of judgment as to what things are "self-evident"-some being so to A whilst they are not so to B, and others being self-evident to B which are not so to. A -it cannot be trusted as an autocratic or infallible authority. And

yet, as Dr. Reid truly says, "disputes very often terminate in an appeal to common sense;" this being especially the case when to doubt its judgment would be ridiculous.*

It will be my object to show that these two forms of ordinary Common Sense have fundamentally the same basis; and, further, that this basis is the same as that of the special forms of Common Sense which are the attribute of men who have applied themselves in a scientific spirit to any particular course of inquiry Science being, as has been well said by Professor Huxley, "nothing but trained and organized Common Sense;" and things coming to be perfectly "selfevident" to men of such special culture, which ordinary men, or men whose special culture has lain in a different direction, do not apprehend as such.

What we call the judgment of Common Sense appears to me to be the immediate or instinctive response that is given, in Psychological language, by the Automatic action of the Mind, or, in Physiological language, by the Reflex action of the Brain,† to any question which can be answered by such a direct appeal to "self-evident" truth. The nature and value of that reply will depend upon the acquired condition of the Mind, or of the Brain, at the time it is given; that condition being the product of two factors :-(1) The Original Constitution of the individual; (2) the Aggregate of the Psychical operations of which he has been the subject. For I presume that no Psychologist doubts that the mental condition of every individual Man, as he exists at any moment, is the general resultant of the agencies which have affected the development of his inherited constitution, whether these agencies have been brought to bear upon him ab externo, or by his own power of self-direction. And as a Physiologist, I cannot doubt that this general resultant has been embodied, so to speak, in his Nervous Mechanism; in accordance with that general law of Nutrition which so remarkably distinguishes any living Organism from a mere machine, and which, underlying Habit of every kind, is particularly noticeable in Man;-namely, that it grows to the mode in which it is habitually exercised, so as to form itself into an apparatus specially adapted for the automatic performance of any kind of action it has been trained to execute.

*Hence the force of such appeals is often intensified by the humorous form in which they are expressed ; as was eminently the case with the pithy sayings of Sydney Smith and the pregnant jokes of President Lincoln."

+ The doctrine that "the Brain can remember, create, and understand" having been explicitly accepted by so eminent a Metaphysician as Archbishop Manning, the Physiologist may lay aside all fear of being misunderstood in the use of whatever language best expresses his view of the phenomena of Man's compound nature. All that is here said of Organization or Mechanism may be stated equally well in terms of Mind; the Nervous apparatus being admitted by every Psychologist to furnish the instrumental conditions of Mental Activity.

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