I admit that this is much the most sensible position to take, but it can only be taken by those who turn the deafest of deaf ears to the teachings of science, and tolerate no going even for a moment below the surface of things.  People who take this line must know how to put their foot down firmly in the matter of closing a discussion.  Some one may perhaps innocently say that some parts of the body are more living and vital than others, and those who stick to common sense may allow this, but if they do they must close the discussion on the spot; if they listen to another syllable they are lost; if they let the innocent interlocutor say so much as that a piece of well-nourished healthy brain is more living than the end of a finger-nail that wants cutting, or than the calcareous parts of a bone, the solvent will have been applied which will soon make an end of common sense ways of looking at the matter.  Once even admit the use of the participle “dying,” which involves degrees of death, and hence an entry of death in part into a living body, and common sense must either close the discussion at once, or ere long surrender at discretion.

Common sense can only carry weight in respect of matters with which every one is familiar, as forming part of the daily and hourly conduct of affairs; if we would keep our comfortable hard and fast lines, our rough and ready unspecialised ways of dealing with difficult questions, our impatience of what St. Paul calls “doubtful disputations,” we must refuse to quit the ground on which the judgments of mankind have been so long and often given that they are not likely to be questioned.  Common sense is not yet formulated in manners of science or philosophy, for only few consider them; few decisions, therefore, have been arrived at which all hold final.  Science is, like love, “too young to know what conscience,” or common sense, is.  As soon as the world began to busy itself with evolution it said good-bye to common sense, and must get on with uncommon sense as best it can.  The first lesson that uncommon sense will teach it is that contradiction in terms is the foundation of all sound reasoning—­and, as an obvious consequence, compromise, the foundation of all sound practice.  This, it follows easily, involves the corollary that as faith, to be of any value, must be based on reason, so reason, to be of any value, must be based on faith, and that neither can stand alone or dispense with the other, any more than culture or vulgarity can stand unalloyed with one another without much danger of mischance.

It may not perhaps be immediately apparent why the admission that a piece of healthy living brain is more living than the end of a finger-nail, is so dangerous to common sense ways of looking at life and death; I had better, therefore, be more explicit.  By this admission degrees of livingness are admitted within the body; this involves approaches to non-livingness.  On this the question arises, “Which are the