94 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



movements break up into subordinate steps, which we pro- 

 ceed to distinguish. 



The lower phase that precedes the consolidation of a 

 common sense order is best understood by reviewing 

 briefly the character of the looser and lower modes of the 

 exercise of intelligence in the developed man. For the 

 more primitive ways are never laid aside. They are 

 merely overlaid and held in check by the more developed 

 thought which is the distinctive product of the social mind 

 at its best. If we suppose this influence withdrawn, we 

 obtain some measure of the untutored mind of the child 

 and of primitive man, and we can in fact corroborate our 

 deductions by the direct examination of ideas and methods 

 current in the lower culture. It will be sufficient here 

 to distinguish two points in which the lower order of 

 thought falls short of the methods and achievement of 

 common sense. 



(a) Common sense uses, in the organisation of experi- 

 ence, general ideas man, animal, custom, good, evil, 

 round, square, single, plural, which are in the main clear 

 and distinct without being rigorously defined or systemati- 

 cally compared. They serve their own purpose, which is 

 that of colligating experience, grouping together things 

 which belong together, and focussing results for the guid- 

 ance of practice. For these purposes the rough-hewn idea 

 serves its turn. The c round ' is not Euclid's circle. It is 

 a wheel which turns c true ' enough to make the cart go. 

 The c just' man is not one who conforms to an abstract 

 ideal of fair dealing, but he is one whom his neighbours 

 trust. Ideas at this stage serve to focus masses of experi- 

 ence, but are not themselves so clean cut and defined as to 

 be capable of being built into a regular system. Where 

 such sy sterna tisation of accurate thought-elements begins 

 we are passing beyond the sphere of common sense into 

 that of science. The common-sense concept is made what 

 it is by rough and ready working of experience, which forces 

 comparisons and distinctions, and so engenders enough of 

 accuracy for many practical purposes, but not enough for 

 systematic reasoning. We may call the concept in this 

 stage a general idea. At the full height of their develop- 



