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Prose

Notes “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 effect upon the mind? If certain effects did not
regularly arise out of certain causes in mind as well as matter, there could be no rule given for
them: nature does not follow the rule, but suggests it. Reason is the interpreter and critic of nature
and genius, not their law-giver and judge. He must be a poor creature indeed whose practical
convictions do not in almost all cases outrun his deliberate understanding, or who does not feel
and know much more than he can give a reason for. Hence the distinction between eloquence and
wisdom, between ingenuity and common sense. A man may be dexterous and able in explaining
the grounds of his opinions, and yet may be a mere sophist, because he only sees one-half of a
subject. Another may feel the whole weight of a question, nothing relating to it may be lost upon
him, and yet he may be able to give no account of the manner in which it affects him, or to drag
his reasons from their silent lurking-places. This last will be a wise man, though neither a logician
nor rhetorician. Goldsmith was a fool to Dr. Johnson in argument; that is, in assigning the specific
grounds of his opinions: Dr. Johnson was a fool to Goldsmith in the fine tact, the airy, intuitive
faculty with which he skimmed the surfaces of things, and unconsciously formed his Opinions.
Common sense is the just result of the sum total of such unconscious impressions in the ordinary
occurrences of life, as they are treasured up in the memory, and called out by the occasion. Genius
and taste depend much upon the same principle exercised on loftier ground and in more unusual
combinations.
I am glad to shelter myself from the charge of affectation or singularity in this view of an often
debated but ill-understood point, by quoting a passage from Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses,
which is full, and, I think, conclusive to the purpose. He says:—
‘I observe, as a fundamental ground common to all the Arts with which we have any
concern in this Discourse, that they address themselves only to two faculties of the
mind, its imagination and its sensibility.
‘All theories which attempt to direct or to control the Art, upon any principles falsely
called rational, which we form to ourselves upon a supposition of what ought in
reason to be the end or means of Art, independent of the known first effect produced
by objects on the imagination, must be false and delusive. For though it may appear
bold to say it, the imagination is here the residence of truth. If the imagination be
affected, the conclusion is fairly drawn; if it be not affected, the reasoning is erroneous,
because the end is not obtained; the effect itself being the test, and the only test, of the
truth and efficacy of the means.
‘There is in the commerce of life, as in Art, a sagacity which is far from being
contradictory to right reason, and is superior to any occasional exercise of that faculty
which supersedes it and does not wait for the slow progress of deduction, but goes at

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