Common man

“ Our lives are guided by that general conception of the course of things which has been created by society for social [27] purposes. Our words, our phrases, our forms and processes and modes of thought, are common property, fashioned and perfected from age to age; an heirloom which every succeeding generation inherits as a precious deposit and a sacred trust to be handed on to the next one, not unchanged but enlarged and purified, with some clear marks of its proper handiwork. Into this, for good or ill, is woven every belief of every man who has speech of his fellows. ”

“ But all our common life is somehow the outcome of our separate individual lives—of your life and mine. Therefore how important it is in the common interest that each of us should look above all things to his own life and its character, for this will determine his contribution to the life of his society. ”

“ As, in the structure of the world, the apparently opposing tendencies of the centrifugal and centripetal forces produce the harmony of the spheres, so, in the social life of man, self-interest and conscience produce in him the feeling for the common good.108 This sentiment of the common interest is the foundation on which rise in successive gradation, the life of the family, of the community, of the nation and of humanity, the last of which should be coincident with the life of the Church. ”

“ If the lower set show a sense of common honesty and common order; those who would figure in the world, think it incumbent to demonstrate that complaisance to inferiors, common manners, common equity, or any thing{41} common, is quite beneath the attention or sphere—of a Gentleman. ”

“ In practical talk, a man's common sense means his good judgment, his freedom from excentricity, his GUMPTION, to use the vernacular word. ”

“ If he goes not, he remains in the common life, with the common conscience, with the common virtue, with the common faith, or with the common doubt; and it is well. For the inward peace it is evidently the best. If he ascends to that peak, he is caught. ”

“ Then why talk about the common people?”
“Because the difference between people isn’t in their class, but in themselves. Only from the middle classes one gets ideas, and from the common people—life itself, warmth. You feel their hates and loves.” ”

“ I do not want to refer to the awful story except in so far as it is a concrete illustration of what I wish to write about—the power of thought examined with common sense in its relation to the happiness of each individual, and the responsibility of its employment by each individual for the benefit of the community—not from the desire to use this opportunity to circulate propaganda for any of the new ethical teachings, but simply from a common-sense point of view to see what good we can get out of a belief that is, I suppose, common to them all. ”

“ That common source is the rational recognition by certain human beings—it may be merely by children of the same parent—of a common well-being which is their well-being, and which they conceive as their well-being whether at any moment any one of them is inclined to it or no, and the embodiment of that recognition in rules by which the inclinations of the individuals are restrained, and a corresponding freedom of action for the attainment of well-being on the whole is secured. ”

“ Carried far enough, this principle, which makes one's neighbor a second self, will bring to light in us the common soul, the common life that has tacitly worked in all human intercourse from the beginning. ”

“ I never have known a man of ordinary common-sense who did not urge upon his sons, from earliest childhood, doctrines of economy and the practice of accumulation. ”

“ But we also find it socially convenient to view the common objects of our human and social knowledge as independent both of my fellow and myself, even while we still view these objects as the same for both of us, and for all other actual and possible human observers. ”

“ If there are certain principles, as I think there are, which the constitution of our nature leads us to believe, and which we are under a necessity to take for granted in the common concerns of life, without being able to give a reason for them; these are what we call the principles of common sense; and what is manifestly contrary to them, is what we call absurd. ”

“ Here the recognition of a common good, a commonwealth in which each person has an equal worth with every other, is the only satisfactory solution. "Be a person, and [3] respect the personality of others," is the duty in this sphere. ”

“ The common duties of every-day life, and the common rules of social policy, are matters which no moralist states once for all: on the contrary, they are reiterated as often as occasion requires—and occasion requires them very often. ”

“ It is in the Portico of the Greek sage that that phrase has received its legitimate explanation; it is there we are taught that ‘common-sense’ signifies ‘the sense of the common interest.’ Yes! it is the most beautiful truth in morals that we have no such thing as a distinct or divided interest from our race. ”

“ I reckon I do, but I have found in the course of a long experience that common people"—repeating it—"common people, take them as they run, are more easily influenced and informed through the medium of a broad illustration than in any other way, and as to what the hypercritical few may think I don't care." ”

“ Few make up their minds; they are made up for them.
The common opinion which reflects the mind of the great majority, embodies the prevailing idea, the universal sentiment, and directs the common action is called. ”

“ If it came to a question of believing you or believing me, who do you think Society would believe—a man of some position, one in the baronetage of Great Britain, or a man—well, not to put too fine a point on it—like you? ”

“ Are men on the whole sane, or hysterical, or possibly paranoiac, in their attitude toward real and possible social conditions? Are the postulates of our social introspection valid or invalid? Have we learned all that can be known about the antecedents of present conditions, about the standards by which these conditions should be judged, about the type of future conditions toward which it is rational to aim, about the means at the disposal of man for the creation of a different social order? ”

“ In order to reach still more definite results, let us consider what their psychology, that is to say, what their doctrine, was in regard to the nature of man, considered as an isolated individual, or viewed in his unsocial capacity. You will observe that man presents himself to our notice under two points of view; as a member of society, and as a man simply, and irrespective of all social relations; in other and shorter words, as a citizen and as an individual. Now, the question is, What are the attributes and constituents of man considered as an individual? ”

“ "Are all very well for common people. ”

“ The phrase Common Sense, when used in the higher philosophy, is to be entirely dissociated from its more vague and popular meanings, in which it expresses natural prudence, or acquired skill in the management of common affairs and in the intercourse of society. ”

“ They depend for their existence, indeed, on society, a society of men who recognise each other as ἴσοι καὶ ὅμοιοι, as capable of a common well-being, but not on society's having assumed the form of a state. ”

“ We must frankly confess, then, using our empirical common sense and ordinary practical prejudices, that in the world that actually is, the virtues of sympathy, charity, and non-resistance may be, and often have been, manifested in excess. ”

“ Thus has come to be the matter-of-fact multitude, the simple, the all-knowing, those who act and think and feel “as everybody else does,” as they are taught and trained by the ingenious apparatus of scientific, moral, and social classifications, definitions, simplifications, in a word—the civilized man. ”

“ Thus our examination shows great instability and uncertainty in the most decisive judgments of common sense; since, as I have said, bodily comfort and luxury, wealth, fame, power, society are the objects which common opinion seems most clearly and confidently to recommend as sources of pleasure. ”

“ We have here postulated a community of persons, and a good which realised by the will of one is made public. In "this unity of individuals as respects the end of action, this existence of a practical common good," we have what is called "the moral order of the world." ”

“ It is solely on the basis of this common interest that every society should be governed. ”

“ It seems to me that, for the nation as for the individual, what is most important is to insist on the vital need of combining certain sets of qualities, which separately are common enough, and, alas, useless enough. ”

“ But each of the maxims can be taken to the heart and conscience of the individual, to become a principle of each man’s own character and conduct, and then to reappear, retranslated into social action, according to the wisdom of the time or the wisdom of the man or the wisdom of the Church. ”

“ In setting out the development of society as his aim, the individual makes considerable sacrifices. All that is distinctly individual must go, in character, in work, in science, and art, and that which is concerned with the common need of society must receive attention. ”

“ for without ideas held in common, there is no common action, and without common action, there may still be men, but there is no social body. ”

“ I am a strong individualist by personal habit, inheritance, and conviction; but it is a mere matter of common sense to recognize that the State, the community, the citizens acting together, can do a number of things better than if they were left to individual action. ”

“ And in the same way, when we deal with Man, — with the concrete issues of his daily life, — with the problems of private passion or of public policy, we have to do, primarily, with human nature as it is, and with all the unconquerable naïveté of our desires, of our imperfections, and even of our virtues. ”

“ That seems to us to be the common sense of the matter; and common sense often makes good law. ”

“ It is our intention here to show how this inevitable result operates on civilized existence by its being one of the conditions of Man’s nature, and, consequently, of all arrangements of civilized society. ”

“ The education of the common people requires, perhaps, in a civilized and commercial society, the attention of the public, more than that of people of some rank and fortune. ”

“ The common people are nothing more than the raw material of which a People is made. ”

“ The practical common-sense of modern society, the utilitarian direction which labor, laws, opinion, religion take, is the natural genius of the British mind. ”

“ But in the popular acceptation, common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom. ”

“ Beyond all question, as thus witnessed in the universal moral consciousness, these relations from the most general, that of man to man, down through all special connections, as between parents and children, husband and wife, brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors, rulers and citizens, employer and employé, rich and poor, capable and helpless, and all the other human interrelations in their thousands of diversified forms, do determine and impose both general and specific duties. ”

“ and it carries too great an imputation of ignorance, lightness, or folly for men to quit and renounce their former tenets presently upon the offer of an argument which they cannot immediately answer, and show the insufficiency of: it would, methinks, become all men to maintain peace, and the common offices of humanity, and friendship, in the diversity of opinions; ”

“ Here our difficulty is to understand the social conditions, so unlike those with which we are acquainted, and as society is greater than man, so we feel that society, and not individual men, should occupy the chief place in the picture. ”

“ The point I wish particularly to bring out in this chapter is that the normal self is moulded in primary groups to be a social [Pg 36] self whose ambitions are formed by the common thought of the group. ”

“ The social sympathies, or those laws from which, as from its elements, society results, begin to develop themselves from the moment that two human beings coexist; the future is contained within the present, as the plant within the seed; and equality, diversity, unity, contrast, mutual dependence, become the principles alone capable of affording the motives according to which the will of a social being is determined to action, inasmuch as he is social; and constitute pleasure in sensation, virtue in sentiment, beauty in art, truth in reasoning, and love in the intercourse of kind. ”

“ The common opinion, even the common critical opinion of some authority, that has been expressed in recent years about the Idylls of the King is a striking instance of this lack of balance and generosity. ”