finger-nail that wants cutting, or than the calcareous parts of a
bone, the solvent will have been applied which will soon make an end
of common sense ways of looking at the matter. Once even admit the
use of the participle "dying," which involves degrees of death, and
hence an entry of death in part into a living body, and common sense
must either close the discussion at once, or ere long surrender at
discretion.

Common sense can only carry weight in respect of matters with which
every one is familiar, as forming part of the daily and hourly
conduct of affairs; if we would keep our comfortable hard and fast
lines, our rough and ready unspecialised ways of dealing with
difficult questions, our impatience of what St. Paul calls "doubtful
disputations," we must refuse to quit the ground on which the
judgments of mankind have been so long and often given that they are
not likely to be questioned. Common sense is not yet formulated in
manners of science or philosophy, for only few consider them; few
decisions, therefore, have been arrived at which all hold final.
Science is, like love, "too young to know what conscience," or
common sense, is. As soon as the world began to busy itself with
evolution it said good-bye to common sense, and must get on with
uncommon sense as best it can. The first lesson that uncommon sense
will teach it is that contradiction in terms is the foundation of
all sound reasoning--and, as an obvious consequence, compromise, the
foundation of all sound practice. This, it follows easily, involves
the corollary that as faith, to be of any value, must be based on
reason, so reason, to be of any value, must be based on faith, and
that neither can stand alone or dispense with the other, any more
than culture or vulgarity can stand unalloyed with one another
without much danger of mischance.