35 
chipping, but no one can say that it has been formed by man. My last 
search was made at Axminster on Saturday. On one side of the table 
there are twenty tools, which I then discovered, and which would be called 
Palaeolithic if they had been found in Brixham cavern ; in the course of 
one hour I picked them all up in one field, and the “ cores ” are in every way 
as good and as perfect as those which Mr. Evans has drawn in his work, 
and which were found in one of the Indian rivers. (Applause.) 
Dr. W. B. Carpenter, F.R.S. — In appearing here to say a few words on 
this subject, I wish it to be understood that I am not about to address 
myself to the general question. I am not a geologist, neither can I call 
myself an archaeologist ; but I do wish to say a few words upon the general 
question of evidence, because that is a subject to which I have paid special 
attention. In my address, as President of the British Association at Brighton, 
I said that this was one of those questions in which common sense was 
superior to logic. Mr. Whitley has given us a good deal of common sense 
do-night ; and as far as he has done that, I go along with him. I have taken 
some pains to study what is called common sense, and to endeavour to arrive 
at what it really is, and how we are to get at it ; and if any one wants to 
know what are my opinions on this subject, he will find them in 1 an article 
which I wrote, a year and a half ago, in the Contemporary Review. I there 
stated that logicians had come to no agreement as to the sources of our 
knowledge of the external world ; that every logical proof which the greatest 
logicians, such as Sir William Hamilton and others, have attempted to give of 
the existence of an external world, — or of such a proposition as that I am here 
among a number of persons, and that to say so is not a mere fallacy evolved 
out of my own consciousness, — has been invalidated by some other logician ; 
and yet, I ask, who can disbelieve the fact ? Our belief in such a case is 
based entirely on common sense ; and what I call common sensei will briefly 
define as the general resultant of the whole previous training and discipline 
of our minds. In certain things, as to which we all agree, common sense is 
sufficient for all of us, because our minds are all so constituted that we come 
to the same conclusions with regard to them ; as, for instance, upon the 
question of the existence of an external world. There are, however, other 
cases in which the trained common sense of men who have made 
special departments of science their study, lead those who have so trained 
themselves to very positive conclusions, which' may and often do appear 
unsound or even absurd to such as have not studied these special subjects. 
For example, the remarkable results of the spectroscope, to those who have 
not mastered the scientific principles by which they have been arrived at, 
may seem preposterous. It may appear absurd to say that a jet of incan- 
descent hydrogen, fifty miles high, shall burst out from the sun and disap- 
pear in ten minutes, this assertion being made on the strength of two or 
three fine red lines shown in the spectroscope ; and yet no person who has 
made a special study of the subject has the least doubt about it. To me it 
seems that no person who has used his common sense, without any previous 
prejudice, can come to any other conclusion, when he sees a whole series 
V 2 
