but, in other cases, I am persuaded, that it was the effect of active and imperious habits in quickening the evanescent processes of thought, so as to render them untraceable by the memory; and to give the appearance of intuition to what was in fact the result of a train of reasoning so rapid as to escape notice. This I conceive to be the true theory of what is generally called common sense, in opposition to book-learning; and it serves to account for the use which has been made of this phrase, by various writers, as synonymous with intuition.

These seemingly instantaneous judgments have always appeared to me as entitled to a greater share of our confidence than many of our more deliberate conclusions; inasmuch as they have been forced, as it were, on the mind, by the lessons of long experience; and are as little liable to be biassed by temper or passion, as the estimates we form of the distances of visible objects. They constitute, indeed, to those who are habitually engaged in the busy scenes of life, a sort of peculiar faculty, analogous, both in its origin and in its use, to the coup d'oeil of the military engineer, or to the quick and sure tact of the medical practitioner, in marking the diagnostics of disease.

For this reason, I look upon the distinction between our intuitive and deductive judgments as, in many cases, merely an object of theoretical curiosity. In those simple conclusions which all men are impelled to form by the necessities of their nature, and in which we find an uniformity not less constant than in the acquired perceptions of sight, it is of as little consequence to the logician to spend his time in efforts to retrace the first steps of the infant understanding, as it would be to the sailor or the sports

man to study, with a view to the improvement of his eye, the Berkeleian theory of vision. In both instances, the original faculty and the acquired judgment are equally entitled to be considered as the work of Nature; and in both instances we find it equally impossible to shake off her authority. It is no wonder, therefore, that, in popular language, such words as common sense and reason should be used with a considerable degree of latitude; nor is it of much importance to the philosopher to aim at extreme nicety in defining their province, where all mankind, whether wise or ignorant, think and speak alike.

In some rare anomalous cases, a rapidity of judgment in the more complicated concerns of life, appears in individuals who have had so few opportunities of profiting by experience, that it seems, on a superficial view, to be the immediate gift of heaven. But, in all such instances (although a great deal must undoubtedly be ascribed to an inexplicable aptitude or predisposition of the intellectual powers,) we may be perfectly assured, that every judgment of the understanding is preceded by a process of reasoning or deduction, or whether the individual himself be able to recollect it or not. Of this I can no more doubt, than I could bring myself to believe that the Arithmetical Prodigy, who has, of late, so justly attracted the attention of the curious, is able to extract square and cube roots by an instinctive and instantaneous perception, because the process of mental calculation, by which he is led to the result, eludes all his efforts to recover it.*

* See Note (E.)
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It is remarked by Mr. Hume, with respect to the elocution of Oliver Cromwell, that "it was always confused, embarrassed, and unintelligible."" The great defect, however, (he adds) in Oliver's speeches consisted, not in his want of elocution, but in his want of ideas; the sagacity of his actions, and the absurdity of his discourse, forming the most prodigious contrast that ever was known." "In the great variety of human geniuses (says the same historian, upon a different occasion) there are some which, though they see their object clearly and distinctly in general; yet, when they come to unfold its parts by discourse or writing, loose that luminous conception which they had before attained. All accounts agree in ascribing to Cromwell, a tiresome, dark, unintelligible elocution, even when he had no intention to disguise his meaning: Yet, no man's actions were ever, in such a variety of difficult incidents, more decisive and judicious."

The case here described may be considered as an extreme one; but every person of common observation must recollect facts somewhat analogous, which have fallen under his own notice. Indeed, it is no more than we should expect à priori, to meet with, in every individual whose early habits have trained him more to the active business of the world, than to those pursuits which prepare the mind for communicating to others its ideas and feelings, with clearness and effect.

An anecdote which I heard, many years ago, of a late very eminent Judge (Lord Mansfield) has often recurred to my memory, while reflecting on these apparent incon

sistencies of intellectual character. A friend of his, who possessed excellent natural talents, but who had been prevented, by his professional duties as a naval officer, from bestowing on them all the cultivation of which they were susceptible, having been recently appointed to the government of Jamaica, happened to express some doubts of his competency to preside in the Court of Chancery. Lord Mansfield assured him that he would find the difficulty not so great as he apprehended. "Trust (he said) to your own good sense in forming your opinions; but beware of attempting to state the grounds of your judgments. The judgment will probably be right ;-the argument will infallibly be wrong."

From what has been said, it seems to follow, that although a man should happen to reason ill in support of a sound conclusion, we are by no means entitled to infer with confidence, that he judged right merely by accident. It is far from being impossible that he may have committed some mistake in stating to others (perhaps in retracing to himself) the grounds upon which his judgment was really founded. Indeed, this must be the case, wherever a shrewd understanding in business is united with an incapacity for clear and luminous reasoning; and something of the same sort is incident, more or less, to all men (more particularly to men of quick parts) when they make an attempt, in discussions concerning human affairs, to remount to first principles. It may be added, that in the old, this correctness of judgment often remains, in a surprising degree, long after the discursive or argumentative power would seem, from some decay of attention, or confusion in the succession of ideas, to have been sensibly impaired by age or by disease.

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In consequence of these views, as well as of various others, foreign to the present subject, I am led to entertain great doubts about the solidity of a very specious doctrine laid down by Condorcet, in his "Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Probabilities of Decisions resting upon the votes of a Majority." "It is extremely possible, (he observes) that the decision which unites in its favour the greatest number of suffrages, may comprehend a variety of propositions, some of which, if stated apart, would have had a plurality of voices against them; and, as the truth of a system of propositions, supposes that each of the propositions composing it is true, the probability of the system can be rigorously deduced only from an examination of the probability of each proposition separately considered."*

When this theory is applied to a court of law, it is well known to involve one of the nicest questions in practical jurisprudence; and, in that light, I do not presume to have formed any opinion with respect to it. It may be doubted, perhaps, if it be not one of those problems, the solution of which, in particular instances, is more safely entrusted to discretionary judgment, than to the rigorous application of any technical rule founded on abstract principles. I have introduced the quotation here, merely on account of the proof which it has been supposed to afford, that the seeming diversities of human belief fall, in general, greatly short of the reality. On this point the

* Essai sur l'Application de l'Analyse à la probabilité des Décisions rendue à la pluralité des Voix. Disc. Prel. pp 46, 47.

Some of the expressions in the above quotation are not agreeable to the idiom of our language; but I did not think myself entitled to depart from the phraseology of the original. The meaning is sufficiently obvious.