Common-sense may, therefore, roughly be defined as the power of preserving our real impressions undistorted and intact. It might be thought that this was no very difficult task, and that most men would really describe and criticise this world of ours as they had really seen and felt it. There are, however, a thousand chronicles and experiences to prove that common-sense is anything but common. At the present day especially, hardly any man builds his opinions upon his own original sensibilities, and the one sane man who should do so would seem to us as fantastic as a lunatic. For language has in our time become so full and florid and fluid a thing that it can cover all contradictions and wash out all boundaries and bridge all abysses of inconsistency.

-February 18, 1902, (London) Daily News