Common Sense, How to Exercise It Part 7

"During a certain length of time, always rather short, the blades, after having remained bound together by the thread which holds them, separate, when it is severed because of the lack of harmony and of equilibrium at their base.

"Very soon, one blade among them detaches itself, and the mutilated fan takes its place in the cemetery where sleep those things deteriorated because of old age or disuse.

"It is the same with the qualities which we have just enumerated. As long as they remain attached to their central point, which is common sense, they stand erect, beautiful and strong, concurring in the fertilization of our minds, and in creating peace in our lives.

"But if the point of contact ceases to maintain them, to bind them together, to forbid their separating, we shall soon see them fall apart after having escaped from the temporary protection of the secondary qualities.

"For a while we seek to evoke them; but recognizing the ruse existing in their commands, we shall soon be the first to abandon them, in order to harmonize our favors with the deceptive mirage of the illusions; at least, if we do not allow ourselves to be tempted by fallacious arguments of vanity.

"In the one as in the other case, we shall become, then, the prey of error and ignorance, for common sense is the intelligence of truth."

LESSON IV

COMMON SENSE AND IMPULSE

Impulsive people are those who allow themselves to be guided by their initial impressions and make resolutions or commit acts tinder the domination of a special consciousness into which perception has plunged them.

Impulse is a form of cerebral activity which, forces us to make a movement before the mind is able to decide upon it by means of reflection or reasoning. The Shogun deals with it at length and defines it thus:

"Impulse is an almost direct contact between perception and result.

"Memory, thought, deduction, and, above all, reason are absolutely excluded from these acts, which are never inspired by intellectuality.

"The impression received by the brain is immediately trans.m.u.ted into an act, similar to those acts which depend entirely on automatic memory.

"It is certain in making a series of movements, which compose the act of walking upstairs or the action of walking from one place to another, we do not think of a.n.a.lyzing our efforts and this act of walking almost limits itself to an organic function, so little does thought enter into its composition.

"In the case of repeated impulses, it can be absolutely affirmed that substance is the antecedent and postulate of the essence of being.

"Substance comprises all corporal materialities: instinctive needs, irrational movements, in a word, all actions where common sense is not a factor.

"Essence is that imponderable part of being which includes the soul, the mind, the intelligence, in fact the entire mentality.

"It is this last element of our being which poetizes our thoughts, cla.s.sifies them, and leads us to common sense, by means of reasoning and judgment.

"He who, having received an injury from his superior, replies to it at once by corresponding affront, is absolutely sure to become the victim of his impulses.

"It is only when his act is consummated, that he will think of the consequences which it can entail; the loss of his employment first, then corporal punishment, in severity according to the gravity of the offense; lastly, misery, perhaps the result of forced inactivity.

"On the contrary, the man endowed with common sense will reflect in a flash, by recalling all the different phases which we have described. His intelligence, being appealed to, will represent to him the consequences of a violent action.

"He will find, in common sense, the strength not to respond to an injury at once; but will not forego the right, however, of avenging himself under the guise of a satisfaction which will be all the more easily accorded to him as his moderation will not fail to make an impression in his favor."

"There is, between common sense and impulse," says Yoritomo, "the difference that one would find between two coats, one of which was bought ready-made, while the other, after being cut according to the proportions of the one who is to wear it, was sewed by a workman to whom all the resources of his art are known."

If impulses adopt the same character for every one, common sense adapts itself to the mind, to the sensitiveness, to the worth of him who practises it; it is a garment which is adjusted to the proportions of its owner, and, according to his taste, is elaborate or simple.

Certain people have a tendency to confound intuition and impulse.

These two things, really very different in essence, are only related by spontaneity of thought which gives them birth.

But whereas intuition, a sensation altogether moral, concisely stated, is composed of mental speculations, impulses always resolve themselves into acts and resolutions to act.

Intuition is a sort of obscure revelation, which reason controls only after its formation.

Impulse never engages common sense in the achievements which it realizes. It never decides upon them in advance, and almost always engenders regrets.

It is the result of a defeat in self-control, which will-power and the power of reasoning alone can correct.

Intuition is less spontaneous than impulse.

It is a very brief mental operation, but, nevertheless, very real, which, very indistinctly, touches lightly all the phases of reasoning, in order to reach a conclusion so rapidly that he who conceives it has difficulty in making the transformations of the initial thought intelligible.

It is none the less true that intuition is always inspired by a predicted reflection, but, in spite of this fact, an existing reflection.

Impulse, on the contrary, only admits instinct as its source of existence.

It is the avowed enemy of common sense, which counsels the escape from exterior insinuations that one may concentrate, in order to listen to the voice which dictates to us the abstinence from doing anything until after making a complete a.n.a.lysis of the cause which agitates us.

Some philosophers have sought to rank inspiration under the flag of impulse, which they thought to defend; yes, even to recover esteem under this new form.

"We should know how to stand on guard," says Yoritomo, "against this fatal error."

"Inspiration," says he, "is rarely immobilized under the traits which characterized its first appearance.

"Before expressing itself in a work of art or of utility, it was the embryo of that which it must afterward personify.

"The ancients when relating that a certain divinity sprang, fully armed, from the head of a G.o.d, accredited this belief to instantaneous creation.

"If musicians, painters, poets, and inventors want to be sincere, they will agree that, between the thought which they qualify as inspiration, and its tangible realization, a ladder of transformations has been constructed, and that it is only by progressive steps that they have attained what seemed to them the nearest to perfection."

Impulse, then, is only distantly related to inspiration and intuition.

Let us add that these gifts are very often only the fruit of an unconscious mental effort, and that, most of the time, the thoughts, which in good faith one accepts as inspiration or intuition, are only nameless reminiscences, whose apparition coincides with an emotional state of being, which existed at the time of the first perception.

There, again, the presence of reasoning is visible, and also the presence of common sense, which tries to convert into a work of lasting results those impressions which would probably remain unproductive without the aid of these two faculties.

Impulses are, most of the time, the va.s.sals of material sensations.

Definite reasoning and impartial judgment, inspired by common sense, are rarely the possession of a sick man.

Sufferings, in exposing him to melancholy, make him see things in a defective light; the effort of thinking fatigues his weak brain, and the fear of a resolution which would force him to get out of his inactivity has enormous influence upon the deductions which dictate his judgment.

Before discussing the advantages of conflict, he will instinctively resign himself to inertia.