Common Sense, How to Exercise It Part 25

"This sense discerns an important quality, which puts us on our guard against the danger of certain theories, whose brilliancy might seduce us.

"It is the moral sense which indicates to us the point of delimitation separating legitimate concessions from forbidden license.

"It allows us to go as far as the dangerous place where the understanding with conscience might become compromised and, by reasoning, proves to us that there would be serious danger in proceeding further.

"It is the moral sense which distinguishes civilized man from the brute; it is the regulator of the movements of the soul and the faithful indicator of the actions which depend on it."

We must really pity those who are deprived of moral sense for they are the prey of all the impulses created in them by the brute-nature, which sleeps in the depths of each human creature.

The man whose moral sense is developed will live at peace with himself, for he will only know the evil of doubt when he realizes the satisfaction of having conquered it.

Moral sense, like common sense, is formed by reasoning and is fostered by the practise of constant application.

It is the property of those who avoid evil, as others avoid the spatter of mud, through horror of the stains which result from it.

Those who do not have this apprehension flounder about, cover themselves with mud, sink in it and finally are swallowed up.

Yoritomo again takes up the defense of common sense, with reference to the arts.

"Can one imagine," he says, "a painter conceiving a picture and grouping his figures in such a way as to violate the rules of common sense?

"We should be doomed, if this were true, to see men as tall as oak-trees and houses resembling children's toy constructions, placed without reference to equilibrium among green or pink animals, whose legs had queer shapes.

"Madmen represent nature thus, which seems to them outlined in strange forms.

"But people of common sense reproduce things just as sound judgment conceives of them; if they throw around them at times the halo of beauty which seems exaggerated, let us not decry them.

"Beauty exists everywhere; it dwells in the most humble objects, makes all around us resplendent and, if we refuse to see it, we are blinded by an unjust prejudice, or our minds are not open to the faculty of contemplation.

"It is revealed above all to those who cultivate common sense and reject the sophistries of untruth that they may surround themselves with truth.

"Such people scorn trivial casualties; they adopt an immutable rule, reasoning, which permits them to deduce, to judge, and afterward to produce.

"All beautiful creations are derived from this source.

"The most admirable inventions would never have been known if common sense had not helped them to be produced, strengthening those who conceived them by the support of logic, which demonstrated to them the truth of their presumptions.

"Authority follows, based on the experience which, by maintaining the effect of judgment, has armed them with the strength of the mind, the true glory of peaceful conquerors."

Would one not say that the Shogun, in writing these lines, foresaw the magnificent efforts which we are witnessing each day and that from the depths of time he caught a glimpse of these brave conquerors of the air and of s.p.a.ce, whose great deeds, seeming at times the result of a crazy temerity, are in reality only homage rendered to common sense, which has permitted them to calculate the value of their initiative without mistake?

And one can not be denied the pleasure of entering once more into close communion of thought with the old philosopher when he says:

"Enthusiasm is of crystal but common sense is of bra.s.s."