not know?  Is it clear to every one else?  This doubt makes it difficult even to hint at the perplexity.  These are often naturally religious minds, and outside the guidance of the Catholic Church, in search of truth, they easily fall under the influence of different schools of thought which take them out of their depth, and lead them further and further from the reasonable certainty about first principles which they are in search of.  Within the Church, of course, they can never stray so far, and the truths of faith supply their deepest needs.  But if they want to know more, to know something of themselves, and to have at least some rational knowledge of the universe, then to give them a hold on the elements of philosophical knowledge is indeed a mental if not a spiritual work of mercy, for it enables them to set their ideas in order by the light of a few first principles, it shows them on what plane their questions lie, it enables them to see how all knowledge and new experience have connexions with what has gone before, and belong to a whole with a certain fitness and proportion.  They learn also thus to take themselves in hand in a reasonable way; they gain some power of attributing effects to their true causes, so as neither to be unduly alarmed nor elated at the various experiences through which they will pass.

Between these two divisions lies a large group, that of the “average person,” not specially flighty and not particularly thoughtful.  But the average person is of very great importance.  The greatest share in the work of the world is probably done by “average” people, not only for the obvious reason that there are more of them, but also because they are more accessible, more reliable, and more available for all kinds of responsibility than those who have made themselves useless by want of principle, or those whose genius carries them away from the ordinary line.  They are accessible because their fellow-creatures are not afraid of them; they are not too fine for ordinary wear, nor too original to be able to follow a line laid down for them, and if they take a line of their own it is usually intelligible to others.

To these valuable “average” persons the importance of some study of the elements of philosophy is very great.  They can hardly go through an elementary course of mental science without wishing to learn more, and being lifted to a higher plane.  The weak point in the average person is a tendency to sink into the commonplace, because the consciousness of not being brilliant induces timidity, and timidity leads to giving up effort and accepting a fancied impossibility of development which from being supposed, assumed, and not disturbed, becomes in the end real.