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The author of this book has written many volumes purporting to discuss various serious subjects of psychological import. These have been written in a popular and authoritative rather than a scientific
vein. This volume follows the same trend as the previous ones but is somewhat more loosely organized. Although its title would indicate an integration of subject matter, the book consists of fourteen separate 'essays' with little in common.
In the preface there is an attempt to claim a unitary whole for the papers. The author suggests that the theme of 'reason' runs through 'most of them', and that 'common sense' is the basis of this reason. He even claims that this volume might be used as a text for the 'philosophy of common sense'. He apologizes for the use of the term 'common sense' as perhaps too indefinite a subject and too popular a concept, but nevertheless he attempts to define it as a quality 'shared by the majority of mankind … which enables us to act soundly at any one time'. Later, however, he offers some contradiction to this definition by stating that it is very rare, as evidenced by mass and individual behavior. In a second definition he claims that common sense consists of general objectivity which can offer the truth of an undemonstrable fact mainly by 'consensus omnia', or 'the core of public opinion when shorn of its prejudice, propaganda, imitation, suggestion and ignorance'.
Thus justifying the title by this explanatory preface, the essays proceed as a series of descriptions of the author's opinions upon a motley array of subjects including love, graphology, technocracy, psychological quacks, neurosis, sanity, the childishness of American people, and so forth. These opinions are written in a charming popular style which is enriched with frequent and pertinent quotations, indicating the erudition of the author. As a group of essays of opinion the book should offer a few hours of pleasant reading, but as a text on 'psychology' it offers not