Common Sense, How to Exercise It Part 24

"Without it, the reign of the most admired things would be of short duration, granting that the want of logic had not prevented their production.

"What is there more commendable than the love of work, devotion to science, ambition to succeed?

"Could all this exist if common sense did not intervene to permit the development of the deductions on which are based the resolutions that inspired in us these aspirations.

"But this is not all; without logic, which permits us to give them solidity, the most serious resolutions would soon become nothing but vague projects, shattered as soon as formed.

"In common sense lies the cause and the object of things.

"It is common sense which makes us realize that difference that few persons are willing to a.n.a.lyze, and which lies between judgment and opinion.

"We almost always succeed in readily confounding them, and from this mistake results a too-frequent cause of failures.

"Opinion is a conviction which is capable of modification.

"In addition to this, as it is based on mere indications and probability, it is rarely free from the personal element.

"Opinion depends upon the favorite inclination, upon the mood of the moment, upon sundry considerations, which direct it almost always toward the desired solution.

"Also it depends often on thoughtfulness or on the inexactness of the initial representation, which we are pleased to disguise slightly at first, then little by little to color in accordance with our desires.

"Falsehood does not necessarily enter into this process of tricking things out; it is, three-quarters of the time, the result of an illusion which we are p.r.o.ne to perpetuate within us.

"We are too often in the position of the three wise men who, while rummaging in an old sarcophagus, discovered a vase whose primitive function they were unable to determine with any certainty.

"One of them was a poet and an idealist.

"The second only prized positive things.

"The third belonged to the category of melancholy people.

"After a few days devoted to special research work, they met together again in order to communicate to each other their different opinions about the exhumed vase.

"'I have found the secret,' said the first.

"'I also,' affirmed the second.

"'I equally have found it,' replied the third.

"And each one based his opinion on preconceived notions which reflected their bent of mind:

"'This vase,' said the first, 'was intended to hold incense, which they burned a that epoch, in the belief that the smoke dispelled the evil spirits.'

"'Nonsense!' cried out the second; 'this vase is a pot which at that time served as a receptacle for keeping spices.'

"'Not so!' insisted the third, 'it is an urn of antiquated design used for receiving tears; that is all.'

"These three serious men were certainly sincere in giving explanations which each one of them declared decisive. They exprest opinions which they believed implicitly and which their respective natures directed irresistibly toward their peculiar bents of mind.

"Judgment, in order to be free from all which is not common sense, ought then to put aside all personal predilections, all desire to form a conclusion to humor our inclinations.

"Absolute impartiality of judgment is one of the rarest gifts and at the same time is the n.o.blest quality which we can possess."

We should then conclude, with the Shogun, that common sense aids in the production of n.o.ble aspirations, and is not concerned only with that which relates to materiality, as so many people would have us understand.

The Nippon philosopher teaches us also the part which he a.s.signs to the habitual practise of goodness.

"We are too easily persuaded," he says, "that goodness, like beauty, is a gift of birth.

"It is time to destroy an error rooted in our minds for too many centuries.

"Goodness is acquired by reasoning and logic, as are so many other qualities, and it is common sense which governs its formation.

"Have we ever reflected over the sum total of annoyances that people, who are essentially wicked, add every day to those imposed upon them by circ.u.mstances?

"Are we capable of appreciating the joys of life when impatience makes the nerves vibrate or when anger brandishes its torch in the bends and turns of the brain?

"People who lack goodness are the first to be punished for their defect.

Serenity is unknown to them and they live in perpetual agitation, caused by the irritation which they experience on the slightest provocation."

Common sense indicates then in an irrefutable way that there is every advantage in being good.

And Yoritomo proves it to us, by using his favorite syllogism:

"Happiness," he says, "is above all a combination of harmony and absence of sorrow.

"Wickedness, by inspiring us with discontent and anger, disturbs this harmony.

"We must, therefore, banish wickedness, that we may cultivate goodness, which is the creator of harmony."

Continuing still further the same argument, he adds:

"Common sense would have the tendency even to make us promise to be good, so as to satisfy our own egotism.

"Goodness creates smiles; to sow happiness around one, is a way of having neither eyes nor heart offended by the sight of people in tears; it is the eliciting of an agreeable joy, whose rays will shed a golden light over our life; is it not more pleasing to hear the ring of laughter than to listen to painful sobs?"

So, we should never lose an opportunity of being good and that without mental reservation.

Grat.i.tude is not the possession of every soul and he who does good may expect to receive ingrat.i.tude.

He will not suffer from it, if he has done good, not in the way a creditor does who intends to come on the very day appointed to claim his debt, but as a giver who fulfils his mission from which he is expecting a personal satisfaction, without thinking of any acknowledgment for what he has done.

If the debtor is filled with grat.i.tude, the joy of being good is that much increased.

There is a species of common sense of a particularly n.o.ble quality that is called moral sense and which the Shogun defines thus:

"The moral sense is the common sense of the soul; it is the superior power of reasoning which stands before us that we may be prevented from pa.s.sively following our instincts; it is by its a.s.sistance that we succeed without too much difficulty in climbing the steep paths of duty.