Another accusation by the same author is insinuated rather than expressed. He says that 'the common sort of men seldom speak insignificantly, and are, therefore, by those other egregious persons' (that is to say, the School-men) 'counted idiots.' If these words mean anything, they evidently convey the imputation that the Scholastic Philosophy is opposed to the dictates of common sense, because it despises that which has some meaning and is capable of being understood. Yet nothing can be further from the truth. As all are aware, who know anything at all about the matter, the great Doctors of the School adhered unanimously to the Peripatetic Philosophy. St. Thomas, in particular, never loses an occasion of showing his reverence for the Philosopher, (as he perpetually styles him) -- habitually quotes his authority, as though it were practically tantamount to a demonstration in the order of natural truths, -- has left us elaborate Commentaries on his principal Works, -- has used his Ethics as the scientific basis of his own Moral Theology, and his Metaphysical writings as the scientific basis of his own Dogmatic Theology, -- and, in those of the Opuscula which are exclusively devoted to questions of Philosophy, contents himself with evolving the principles, conclusions, teaching of the Stagyrite. Yet, if there is one thing more than another that is characteristic of Aristotle, it is his repeated appeal to, and confidence in, the general voice of mankind. He announces the following canon, as though it were a self-evident axiom: 'We assert' -- these are his words, -- 'that an opinion, held by all men, is true.'^{1} Commenting on this dictum, St. Thomas observes that 'it is held as a sort of Principle. For it is not possible that the natural judgment should err in all men.'^{2}

Perhaps there is nothing that is more characteristic of the Scholastic Doctors, as a body, than the account which they professedly make of the common verdict of mankind and of the judgments of common sense. Indeed, it is precisely because the modern Schools of German Philosophy, (not to mention others nearer home), seem so entirely to dispense with these important criteria of Truth, that the Peripatetic can see in their manifold theories nothing else save the symmetrical conceits of baseless speculation. Lest it might be imagined that this is a mere retort provided for the occasion, I will quote from a Lecture, which I delivered some years ago, on Evidence and Certainty in their relation to Conceptual Truth; wherein, only in a more popular form, (as befitted the occasion), I expressed the same conviction. After having quoted two passages from Reid on the authority of common sense and the necessity under which the true philosopher finds himself of submitting to its guidance, I proceed as follows: -- 'Men may waste their time in spinning cobwebs, like the spider, from the entrails of their own consciousness. There those cobwebs will be, up in the corner of the study, objects perchance of wonder for their geometrical symmetry and delicate -- all but aerial tissue. Some poor fly or two may be entangled in their meshes. But ere long comes the inevitable broom. Common sense, -- that valuable maid of all work, -- spies the intrusion in the corner, sweeps it ruthlessly down; and mankind in general suffers little from the demolition. In vain will you endeavour to persuade the child that the piercing of a pin or a scratch from pussy is a mere evolution of its own consciousness; -- fruitless your efforts to convince the sailor that the cat-o'-nine-tails is the absolute reason in its act of self-alienation, or that the pain of the bleeding wounds on his back are determining phenomena of a primal nonentity. Nay, let the philosopher himself, when under the torture of a racking toothache, console himself if he can, with his theory of identity or his dream of the absolute. Naturam expellas furca tamen usque recurret. You may not be able to demonstrate immediate evidence. I know you cannot. You may not be able to analyze its nature. I own that it is difficult. But you dare not deny or doubt its existence; if you do, until you cast the doubt or denial from you, you logically condemn yourself to a perpetual paralysis of mind, heart, affection. The exigencies of common life are for ever crying shame upon you; and the practical instincts of human nature are forcing you to give the lie to your own useless speculations. Your philosophy is that of an arm-chair; -- it cannot show its face at the table, in the shop, the market-place, the exchange, the council, or the court of law. It is this unwise spirit of universal criticism, or rather of universal scepticism, -- this ruthless destruction of primitive facts and of first principles, -- this wild yearning after a self-constructed philosophy, which shall take nothing for granted and evolve itself out of one fundamental principle by process of pure reason, irrespective of all facts or judgments of common sense, -- which has in modern times concealed the fair face of the Queen of sciences with a mask of unreality, unreason, sophistry, and emptiness; and turned the very name of Metaphysic, in this our country at least, into a proverb of reproach.' It will be seen, in the course of these volumes, how frequently I recur to the criterion of common sense; as I have learned to do from the great Doctors of the School, whose disciple I profess myself.

The reader must not, however, conclude from the above remarks, that the deep problems of Philosophy, discussed and solved in the scientific form and language of the School, would be understood by the unaided common sense of the vulgar. This it would be too much to expect. All which is required is, that the metaphysical science should be rooted in the general convictions of mankind and the dictates of common sense; and that in its teaching it should never contravene either of these primitive sources of truth.

{1} Ho gar pasi dokei, tout einai phamen. Ethic. Nic. L. x, c. 2.

{2} 'Illud enim quod videtur omnibus, dicimus ita se habere; et hoc videtur quasi principium. Quia non est possibile quod naturale judicium in omnibus fallatur.' In Ethic. L. x, Lect. 3, ad loc.