Review of Common sense and its cultivation

Abstract

Reviews the book, Common sense and its cultivation by Hanbury Hankin (1926). The author, a British physician in India, raises and attempts to answer two questions Can we know more about the nature of common sense? Can its development be "stimulated by any practical changes in our educational methods." The book really deals with various problems which are usually grouped under the category of "the subconscious." The thesis is presented that all of the important problems in commerce and finance, medicine and education can be solved more quickly and safely by the snap-judgments of the "subconscious" and "preconscious" minds than by the ratiocinations of the third "mind"-the conscious one. Psychologically the book performs the office of emphasizing, from the point of view of a shrewd "lay" observer, the importance of pushing the degrading process in "learning" as near the asymptote as possible where this "learning" is of certain professional or vocational types. Otherwise it is trivial. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)