the horror of the big-worded Sophists, from dogs,
kettles, fishwives, and what not which is vulgar and commonplace?
Or did I, in my clumsy attempt to imitate him, make use of a single
argument which does not lie, developed or undeveloped, in the Common
Sense of every clown; in that human Reason of his, which is part of
God's image in him, and in every man? And has not my complaint
against Mr. Windrush's school been, that they will not do this; that
they will not accept the ground which is common to men as men, but
disregard that part of the 'Vox Populi' which is truly 'Vox Dei,'
for that which is 'Vox Diaboli'-for private sentiments, fancies, and
aspirations; and so casting away the common sense of mankind, build
up each man, on the pin's point of his own private judgment, his own
inverted pyramid?"

"But are you not asking me to do just the same, when you propose to
me to start as a Scientific Dialectician?"

"Why, what are Dialectics, or any other scientific method, but
conscious common sense? And what is common sense, but unconscious
scientific method? Every man is a dialectician, be he scholar or
boor, in as far as he tries to use no words which he does not
understand, and to sift his own thoughts, and his expression of
them, by that Reason which is at once common to men, and independent
of them."

"As M. Jourdain talked prose all his life without knowing it. Well-
I prefer the unconscious method. I have as little faith as Mr.
Carlyle would have in saying: 'Go to, let us make'-an induction
about words, or anything else. It seems to me no very hopeful
method of finding out facts as they are."

"Certainly; provided you mean any particular induction, and not a
general inductive and severely-inquiring habit of mind; that very
'Go to' being a fair sign that you have settled beforehand what the
induction shall be; in plain English, that you have come to your
conclusion already, and are now looking about for facts to prove it.
But is it any wiser to say: 'Go to, I will be conscious of being
unconscious of being conscious of my own forms of thought'? For
that is what you do say, when, having read Plato, and knowing his
method, and its coincidence with Common Sense, you determine to
ignore it on common-sense questions."

"But why not ignore it, if mother-wit does as well?"

"Because you cannot ignore it. You have learnt it more or less, and
cannot forget it, try as you will, and must either follow it, or