Observe the strength, the height, the why and when
It was erected; and still walking under,
Meet some new matter to look up, and wonder.


But reason, not employed to interpret nature, and to improve and perfect
common sense and experience, is, for the most part, a building without a
foundation. The criticism exercised by reason, then, on common sense
may be as severe as it pleases, but it must be as patient as it is
severe. Hasty, dogmatical, self-satisfied reason is worse than idle
fancy or bigoted prejudice. It is systematic, ostentatious in error,
closes up the avenues of knowledge, and 'shuts the gates of wisdom on
mankind.' It is not enough to show that there is no reason for a thing
that we do not see the reason of it: if the common feeling, if the
involuntary prejudice sets in strong in favour of it, if, in spite of
all we can do, there is a lurking suspicion on the side of our first
impressions, we must try again, and believe that truth is mightier than
we. So, in ordering a definition of any subject, if we feel a misgiving
that there is any fact or circumstance emitted, but of which we have
only a vague apprehension, like a name we cannot recollect, we must ask
for more time, and not cut the matter short by an arrogant assumption of
the point in dispute. Common sense thus acts as a check-weight on
sophistry, and suspends our rash and superficial judgments. On the
other hand, if not only no reason can be given for a thing, but every
reason is clear against it, and we can account from ignorance, from
authority, from interest, from different causes, for the prevalence of
an opinion or sentiment, then we have a right to conclude that we have
mistaken a prejudice for an instinct, or have confounded a false and
partial impression with the fair and unavoidable inference from general
observation. Mr. Burke said that we ought not to reject every