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Unit 15: Hazlitt—On Genius and Common Sense...

systematic, ostentatious in error, closes up the avenues of knowledge, and ‘shuts the gates of Notes
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 prejudice, but
should separate the husk of prejudice from the truth it encloses, and so try to get at the kernel
within; and thus far he was right. But he was wrong in insisting that we are to cherish our
prejudices ‘because they are prejudices’: for if all are well founded, there is no occasion to inquire
into their origin or use; and he who sets out to philosophise upon them, or make the separation
Mr. Burke talks of in this spirit and with this previous determination, will be very likely to mistake
a maggot or a rotten canker for the precious kernel of truth, as was indeed the case with our
Political sophist.

Common sense is only a judge of things that fall under common observation, or
immediately come home to the business and bosoms of men.

There is nothing more distinct than common sense and vulgar opinion. This is of the very essence
of its principle, the basis of its pretensions. It rests upon the simple process of feeling,—it anchors
in experience. It is not, nor it cannot be, the test of abstract, speculative opinions. But half the
opinions and prejudices of mankind, those which they hold in the most unqualified approbation
and which have been instilled into them under the strongest sanctions, are of this latter kind, that
is, opinions not which they have ever thought, known, or felt one tittle about, but which they have
taken up on trust from others, which have been palmed on their understandings by fraud or force,
and which they continue to hold at the peril of life, limb, property, and character, with as little
warrant from common sense in the first instance as appeal to reason in the last. The ultima ratio
regum proceeds upon a very different plea. Common sense is neither priest craft nor state-policy.
Yet ‘there’s the rub that makes absurdity of so long life,’ and, at the same time, gives the sceptical
philosophers the advantage over us. Till nature has fair play allowed it, and is not adulterated by
political and polemical quacks (as it so often has been), it is impossible to appeal to it as a defence
against the errors and extravagances of mere reason. If we talk of common sense, we are twitted
with vulgar prejudice, and asked how we distinguish the one from the other; but common and
received opinion is indeed ‘a compost heap’ of crude notions, got together by the pride and
passions of individuals, and reason is itself the thrall or manumitted slave of the same lordly and
besotted masters, dragging its servile chain, or committing all sorts of Saturnalian licenses, the
moment it feels itself freed from it.—If ten millions of Englishmen are furious in thinking themselves
right in making war upon thirty millions of Frenchmen, and if the last are equally bent upon
thinking the others always in the wrong, though it is a common and national prejudice, both
opinions cannot be the dictate of good sense; but it may be the infatuated policy of one or both

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