Not only may the range and value of such common sense judgments be increased by appropriate culture in the individual, for, of all parts of our higher nature, the aptitude for forming them is probably that which is most capable of being transmitted hereditarily; so that the descendant of a well-educated ancestry constitutionally possesses in it much higher measure than the progeny of any savage race. And it seems to be in virtue of this automatic co-ordination of the elements of judgment, rather than of any process of conscious ratiocination, that the race, like the individual, emancipates itself from early prejudices, gets rid of worn-out beliefs, and learns to look at things as they are, rather than as they have been traditionally represented. This is what is really expressed by the progress of rationalism. For although that progress undoubtedly depends in great part upon the more general diffusion of knowledge and the higher culture of those intellectual powers which are exercised in the acquirement of it, yet this alone would be of little avail, if the self-discipline thus exerted did not act downwards in improving the mechanism that evolves the self-evident material of our reasoning processes, as well as upwards in more highly elaborating their product. If we examine, for instance, the history of the decline of the belief in witchcraft, we find that it was not killed by discussion, but perished of neglect. The common sense of the best part of mankind has come to be ashamed of ever having put any faith in things whose absurdity now appears self-evident; no discussion of evidence once regarded as convincing is any longer needed; and it is only among those of our hereditarily uneducated population, whose general intelligence is about on a par with that of a Hottentot or an Esquimaux, that we any longer find such faith entertained.
There is, in fact, a sort of under-current, not of actually formed opinion, but of tendency to the formation of opinions, in certain directions, which bursts every now and then to the surface; exhibiting a latent preparedness in the public mind to look at great questions in a new point of view, which leads to most striking results when adequately guided. That "the hour is come--and the man" is what history continually reproduces; neither can do anything effectively without the other. But a great idea thrown out by a mind in advance of its age, takes root and germinates in secret, shapes the unconscious thought of a few individuals of the next generation, is by them diffused still more widely, and thus silently matures itself in the womb of time, until it comes forth, like Minerva, in full panoply of power.