wealth of body and mind--how often, indeed, do we not see people
taking a new lease of life when they have come into money even at an
advanced age; it varies as these vary, beginning with things that,
though they have mind enough for an outsider to swear by, can hardly
be said to have yet found it out themselves, and advancing to those
that know their own minds as fully as anything in this world does
so. The more a thing knows its own mind the more living it becomes,
for life viewed both in the individual and in the general as the
outcome of accumulated developments, is one long process of
specialising consciousness and sensation; that is to say, of getting
to know one's own mind more and more fully upon a greater and
greater variety of subjects. On this I hope to touch more fully in
another book; in the meantime I would repeat that the error of our
philosophers consists in not having borne in mind that when they
quitted the ground on which common sense can claim authority, they
should have reconsidered everything that common sense had taught
them.

The votaries of common sense make the same mistake as philosophers
do, but they make it in another way. Philosophers try to make the
language of common sense serve for purposes of philosophy,
forgetting that they are in another world, in which another tongue
is current; common sense people, on the other hand, every now and
then attempt to deal with matters alien to the routine of daily
life. The boundaries between the two kingdoms being very badly
defined, it is only by giving them a wide berth and being so
philosophical as almost to deny that there is any either life or
death at all, or else so full of common sense as to refuse to see
one part of the body as less living than another, that we can hope
to steer clear of doubt, inconsistency, and contradiction in terms