ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE


We hear it maintained by people of more gravity than understanding, that
genius and taste are strictly reducible to rules, and that there is a
rule for everything. So far is it from being true that the finest
breath of fancy is a definable thing, that the plainest common sense is
only what Mr. Locke would have called a _mixed mode_, subject to a
particular sort of acquired and undefinable tact. It is asked, "If you
do not know the rule by which a thing is done, how can you be sure of
doing it a second time?" And the answer is, "If you do not know the
muscles by the help of which you walk, how is it you do not fall down at
every step you take?" In art, in taste, in life, in speech, you decide
from feeling, and not from reason; that is, from the impression of a
number of things on the mind, from which impression is true and well
founded, though you may not be able to analyse or account for it in the
several particulars. In a gesture you use, in a look you see, in a tone
you hear, you judge of the expression, propriety, and meaning from
habit, not from reason or rules; that is to say, from innumerable
instances of like gestures, looks, and tones, in innumerable other
circumstances, variously modified, which are too many and too refined to
be all distinctly recollected, but which do not therefore operate the
less powerfully upon the mind and eye of taste. Shall we say that these
impressions (the immediate stamp of nature) do not operate in a given
manner till they are classified and reduced to rules, or is not the rule
itself grounded, upon the truth and certainty of that natural operation?

How then can the distinction of the understanding as to the manner in
which they operate be necessary to their producing their due and uniform