I have described it, and
may be fully explained by his mode of life. For in cow-stall or garden
or cottage, or in the fields or on the heaths, the claim of the moment
was all-absorbing; and as he hurried to thatch his rick before the rain
came, or to get his turfs home by nightfall, the ideas which thronged
about his doings crowded out ideas of any other sort. Or if, not
hurrying, his mind went dreamy, it was still of peasant things that he
dreamed. Of what he had been told when he was a child, or what he had
seen for himself in after-life, his memory was full; and every stroke
of reap-hook or thrust of spade had power to entice his intellect along
the familiar grooves of thought--grooves which lie on the surface and
are unconnected with any systematized channels of idea-work underneath.

So the strong country life tyrannized over country brains, and, apart
from the ideas suggested by that life, the peasant folk had few ideas.
Their minds lacked freedom; there was no escape from the actual
environment into a world either of imagination or of more scientific
understanding. Nor did this matter a great deal, so long as the
environment remained intact. In the absence of what we call
"views"--those generalizations about destiny or goodness, or pleasure,
or what not, by which we others grope our way through life--the steady
peasant environment, so well known and containing so few surprises, was
itself helpful, precisely because it was so well known. If a man would
but give shrewd attention to his practical affairs, it was enough; a
substitute for philosophy was already made for him, to save him the
trouble of thinking things out for himself. His whole mental activity
proceeded, unawares, upon a substratum of customary understanding, which
belonged to the village in general, and did not require to be
formulated, but was accepted as axiomatic by all. "Understanding" is the
best word I can find for it. It differed from a philosophy or a belief,
because it contained no abstract ideas; thinking or theorizing had no
part in it; it was a sheer perception and recognition of the
circumstances as they were. The people might dispute about details; but
the general object to be striven for in life admitted of no
disagreement. Without giving it a thought, they knew it. There lay the
valley before them, with their little homesteads, their cattle, their
gardens, the common; and connected with all these things a certain
old-established series