The Attributes of Reason.
The human reason, that haughty faculty, deified in our age by a myriad of perverse and commonplace minds known under the derisive and doubly vain title of freethinkers, is but blind, despite its high opinion of its own insight. Yes, and we affirm by certain intuition that man's reason is not and cannot be otherwise than blind, aside from the revealing principle which only enlightens it in proportion to its subordination; for, abandoned to itself, reason can only err and must fatally fall into an abyss of illusions.
The melancholy age in which we live but too often offers us an example of the lamentable mistakes into which we are hurried by misguided reason, which, yielding to a criminal presumption, deserts without remorse the principle super-abounding in life, light and glory.
To understand such an anomaly, to explain how reason, which constitutes one of the highest attributes of man, is so far subject to error, it is essential to have a thorough apprehension of the complexity of its nature. What, then, is the real nature of the reason so little studied and so illy known by those very men who raise altars in its honor? Let us try to produce a clear demonstration. And let us first say that reason does not constitute a primary principle in man; for a primary principle could never mistake its object. Neither is it a primary faculty; it is only the form or the manner of being of such a faculty, and thus cannot be a light in itself. The rays by which it shines are external to it in the sense that it receives them from the principle which governs and fertilizes it. Still, let us say that, although neither a principle nor a faculty, reason is none the less, with conscience, of which it forms the base, the noblest power of man; for this power God created free; free from subjection to the principle that enlightens it; free, too, to escape from it. Yet every power necessarily recognizes a guiding principle to whose service it needs must bow; but to reason alone it is granted to avoid the law which imperiously rules the relations of the harmonious subordination of principiant faculties to their principles. Hence the error or possible blindness of reason; hence also its incomparable grandeur, which lies solely in its free and spontaneous subordination. These principles established, let us go still farther, and penetrate deeper into the mysterious genius of reason.
authorized to define reason. He did it in terms at once so simple, so precise, and of such exquisite clarity, that we may venture to think that reason itself could not have better rendered the terms of its own entity.
This definition, let no one fail to see, contains in its extreme brevity more substance than would fill a voluminous treatise. This, then, is his definition:
Reason is the discursive form of the intellect.
Now by this St. Thomas plainly establishes that reason, distinct from the intellect, with which we must beware of confounding it, proceeds from it as effect proceeds from cause. Therefore, intellect surpasses reason as its principiant and guiding faculty; and reason only figures in the intelligential sphere, despite the important part it plays in virtue of its adjunctive or supplementing power.
But what is the purpose of this adjunction? Here, in reply to this grave and important question, let us refer to what the same scholar says elsewhere. "Reason arises," he says, "from the failure of intellect." Certainly this is a luminous, and doubtless a very unexpected proposition. From it we learn, on the one hand, that the intellect is liable to defects and consequently to weaknesses; on the other hand, it seems established that the adjunctive power comes to aid the faculty which governs it, since here the subjected is born of the failure of the subjector.
Let us explain this fresh anomaly. We have in the first place declared the preceding proposition luminous in spite of the obscurity into which we are plunged by the consequences which we have derived from it; but, patience! We are already aware that it is from the very obscurity of things that the brightest light sometimes bursts upon contemplative eyes; and since faith is the next principle to knowledge, let us have faith at least in the trustworthiness of him who addresses us, especially as he has given us repeated, unequivocal tokens of sound and upright reason. Let us, then, have no doubt that the preceding proposition contains a precious precept; and very certainly light will soon dawn on our mind.
This settled, and for the better understanding of the meaning attached to this proposition, let us call to our aid the powers of analogy.
If reason arises from the failure of intellect it is doubtless to rectify the valuations of the ego. Now the compass, which is in itself very inferior to the hand which fashions it and appropriates it to its own use, nevertheless implies a defect in that hand which directs it. So there is between the eye and the telescope, which comes to its aid, all the distance that divides the faculty from the instrument which it governs. Still the telescope joined to the eye communicates to it a great power of vision; but the instrument arises from the failure of the eye, which is nevertheless infinitely superior to it; for it is the eye which sees, and not the telescope.
It is thus that we must understand the relations of reason and intellect. Let us say, then, that the reason is to the intellect exactly what the telescope is to the eye. This established, we can formulate the following definition as well founded.
The intellect is the spiritual eye whose mysterious telescope reason forms, or: reason is a necessary appendage of mental optics, or again: reason is the glass used by the eye of a defective intellect.
But this is not all. St. Thomas provides us still elsewhere with the means of making our analogy more striking. He says, indeed: reason is given us to make clear that which is not evident. Is not this, as it were, the seal of truth applied to our demonstration? Thus the eye uses the telescope absolutely as the intellect employs the reason, to make clear that which is not evident.
Of course it is plain that if the sight and the intellect answered perfectly to their object, they could do without this adjunct which betrays their imperfection. The intellect would thenceforth have no more need of reason than the eye of glasses.
This explains the fact, so important to consider, that the clearer the mental vision is the less one reasons. The angels do not reason; they see clearly what is troubled and confused by our mind. No one reasons in heaven, there is no logician there, no--Intelligence is immortal, but reason, which serves it here below, will fade away in eternity with the senses which like it do but form the conditions of time.
Divine reason alone will endure because it has nothing accidental, and it is substantially united to the eternal word. It is that reason toward which all blest intelligences will finally gravitate. Hence, we see that what already partakes of the celestial life repels reasoning as a cause of imperfection or infirmity. It is thus, by its exclusion of reasons, that the Gospel supremely proves its celestial origin. It is, indeed, a thing well worth remark, especially worthy of our admiration, that there is not to be found, in the four Gospels, a single piece of reasoning, any more than there is an interjection to be found.
Let us add that faith does not reason: which does not mean, as so many misbelievers feign, that faith is fulfilled by blindness or ignorance of the objects of its veneration. Quite the contrary. Faith dispenses with reason because of the perfection of its sight. It is, finally, because it is superior to reason and sees things from a higher plane. This is what so many short-sighted people cannot see; and, to return to our analogy, it seems to them able to see nothing save through the glasses of reason. It seems to them, I say, that any man who does not wear glasses must see crooked. Keep your glasses, my good souls! They suit short limits of sight. But we, who, thank God, have sound sight, are only troubled and clouded by them.
It is thus that reason, which is given us to make clear what is not evident, frequently obscures even the very evidence itself. We might confirm this declaration by a thousand examples. To cite but one, let us point out how plainly the spectacle of the universe of thought and the idea of a Divine Creator prove that no glasses are required to contemplate God in His works. Well! scientists have felt obliged to direct theirs upon these simple notions, and have thus, i.e., by force of reasoning, succeeded in confusing out of all recognition a question sparkling with evidence, so much so that they will fall into such a state of blindness that they can no longer see in this world any trace of the Supreme Intelligence which is yet manifested with glory in the least of His creatures. Consequently, they will bluntly deny the existence of God; but as they still must needs admit a creative cause, they have to that end invented moving atoms and have made from these strange corpuscles something so perfectly invisible that they can spare themselves the trouble of providing public curiosity with a living proof of their theory.
The scientist is born perverted, as was said of the Frenchman who created the vaudeville; and men, too strong-minded and above all too full of reason to give any credence to the mysteries taught by the church, have displayed a blind faith in respect to moving atoms. They think thus to set themselves free from what they call the prejudices of their fathers. They find no difficulty in attributing to invisible corpuscles both the plan and the execution of the beings who people the universe.
This is the fine conception attributed to what is called a higher reason--a conception before which bow legions of strong minds. To such a degree of degradation can reason drag man down.
It is, therefore, dangerous to consult the reason in any case where evidence is likely to be called into play. But, before proceeding farther in the course of our demonstrations, a question presents itself. It may be asked what we think of another kind of reason--pure reason; for it appears that in the opinion of certain philosophers pure reason does exist. I do not know where they authenticated and studied this species of reason. For myself I confess in all humility that not only have I never seen a pure reason, but it has never even been possible for me to raise my mind to the point of comprehending the signification of pure reason. I greatly fear that some nonsense lurks within the phrase, such transcendental nonsense as belongs to ideological philosophers alone. I know not why, but these gentlemen's pure reason always gives me the sensation of a strong blast of moving atoms. In fact, it is not clear; but why require clarity of philosophers and ideologists?
But let us leave these senseless words and pursue the course of our demonstrations.
What we have said of reason is quite sufficient to prevent its confusion with the faculty whose discursive form it is. But this is not enough. We must, by still more delicate distinctions, make any confusion between these two terms impossible.
Reason, although essentially allied to intelligence, is not, like it, primordial in man. Thus God created man intelligent, and consequently susceptible of reason; but we do not see the word reason brought into play in Genesis, because it merely expresses a derivation from the mind or intellect. Reason, therefore, is secondary and posterior in the genetic order. But here to the support of this assertion we have a striking and undeniable proof; namely, that the infant is born intelligent but not reasonable. Intellect proceeds directly from that true light which shines in every man on his entrance into the world, while reason is merely the fruit of experience. A proof of the superiority of intelligence to reason is seen in the fact that it partakes of the immutable, and is not like the latter, liable to progress.
Thus the child is seen to be as intelligent as an adult man can be. Let us rather say that it is in the child especially that intelligence displays its brightest rays. Yet he is not furnished with reason. And why not? Because he has no experience. Reason, therefore, is an acquired power, whose light is borrowed from experience or tradition.
Reason is proportional to the experience acquired. Practical reason or rationality is the ration or portion of experience allotted to each person.
Reason is to the mental vision exactly what the eye is to optical vision, and just as the eye borrows its visual action from external light, so reason borrows its power of clear and correct vision from traditional experience. The similarity is absolute.
Suppress light, and vision ceases to be possible. Suppress revelation from intellectual objects, and reason is thenceforth blind.
Between reason and intelligence, although there be inclusion and co-essentiality in these terms, there is a great difference in the mode of cognizance; for, as St. Augustine says, intelligence is shown by simple perception, and reason by the discursive process. Thus, while intelligence acts simply, as in knowing an intelligible truth by the light of its own intuition, reason goes toward its end progressively, from one thing known to another not yet known.
The latter, as St. Thomas says, implies an imperfection. The former, on the contrary, beseems a perfect being. It is, therefore, evident, adds the same profound thinker, that reasoning bears the same relation to knowledge that motion does to repose, or as acquisition to possession. The one is of an imperfect nature, and the other of a perfect nature. Boëthius compares the intellect to eternity; reason, to time.
Yet human reason, according to the principle which illuminates it, offers three degrees of elevation which we will distinguish, for readier comprehension, by three special terms, namely: first, tradition or the experience of another; second, personal experience; third, the reason of things.
Trained by tradition, reason is called common sense. Trained by personal experience to the knowledge of principles, reason is called science. Trained by the contemplation of principles to the perfection of the intellect, reason is called wisdom.
What we call practical reason is based upon the authority of tradition and the lessons of other people's experience in regard to the customary and moral matters of life.
Speculative or discursive reason judges by the criterion of its own experience; thereby inferring consequences more or less in conformity with traditional teachings, and arriving by the logical order of its deductions and in virtue of the principles which it accepts and which it applies to its discoveries, at what we call science.
Transcendental reason pursues, in the effects which it examines, the investigation of their cause, and rises thence to the very reason of things. Wherefore it silences reasoning, enters into a silent and persistent course of observation, consults the facts, examines, studies and questions the principles whence it sees them to be deduced; and, without yielding to the obscurity in which these principles are enveloped, pierces that obscurity by the penetrative force of unremitting attention. Inspired by the standard of faith, it knows that the spirit of God exists at the root of these mysteries. It clings thereto, unites itself thereto by contemplation, and finally draws from this union its strength, its light and its joy.
Such is the course of wisdom, and such are the inestimable advantages of faith to reason. It is in fact by faith that reason is aggrandized and elevated to the height of the intellect whence it draws its certitude.
Reason believes because it desires to understand, and because it knows that faith is the next principle to knowledge.
Thus the grandeur of reason is proportioned to its humility; proportioned, I would say, to the efforts which it multiplies to forget itself when the truth addresses it. But such is not the method of procedure of "strong minds." They have a horror of the mysteries toward which they are still urged by correct instincts. The fact is, let us say it boldly, they fear lest they find God there.
In these misguided spirits there is so much presumption, self-conceit, self-love, that they are, in the nullity of their lofty pride, a worship unto themselves, an idolatry of their own reason. They have deified it,--that poor, frail reason; and this, while mutilating it, while proclaiming it independent and free from all law, from all principle, from everything definite.
To what excess of imbecility, then, have we not seen these freethinkers fall, these apostles of independent reason, who on principle boast that they have no faith and no law! Thence comes the scorn which afflicts these unbelievers for all who believe and hope here below; thence, their systematic ignorance of fundamental questions; thence, the incurable blindness in which they bask; thence, finally, the inconsistencies and contradictions which make them a spectacle humiliating to the human mind.
But agnostic man labors in vain. He cannot escape the mysteries which surround him on every hand, like a gulf in which reason is inevitably lost so soon as it ceases to seek the light.
Man stumbles at every turn against the efforts of a stronger reason than his own,--the Supreme Reason before which, nilly nilly, his must bow and confess the insanity of its judgments.
Logic is not, to reason, a sure guide; and even where it feels its foothold most strong, it sometimes trips, to the disgrace of the good opinion it had of its own infallibility.
Let us show by a simple example to what rebuffs our reason is exposed when counting on the support of its logic, face to face with the reason of facts.
Undoubtedly it is logical and perfectly in conformity with reason, to say that one and one make two. No doubt seems possible on that point. Well, this elementary truth, the most undeniable in the eyes of all men which can be produced, does not, despite the assurances which seem to uphold it, constitute an impregnable axiom; for there are cases when one and one do not make two! Certainly such a proposition seems scarcely reasonable, for its admission would entail the reversal of what are called the sound notions of logic! But what will the logician say if I affirm that in a certain case, one and one make but one-half? Would he even take the trouble to refute me? No, he would laugh in my face; he would not listen to me; he would tax me with absurdity and insanity, preferring thus to lose a chance of instruction rather than confess the impotence of his logic.
There is the evil, and it is generally in this way that ignorance is perpetuated. But let us return to the fact which we desire to prove, contrary to logic and the pretensions of ordinary reason.
Now, it is logical and perfectly in conformity with reason to say that two musical instruments make more noise than one; and that thus two double basses, for example, tuned in unison and placed side by side, produce one sound of a double intensity. This seems an elementary matter. It is as clear, you say, as that one and one make two. Well, no, it is not so clear as you suppose. It is, on the contrary, a mistake; for attentive experiment proves that the result is diametrically opposite to the logical conclusion.
This is a fact which no argument can destroy. Two double basses, placed in the above-named conditions--conditions of vicinity and tonal identity--far from adding up their individual result, are thus reduced each to a quarter of its own sonority, which in the sum total, instead of producing a double sound, produces a sound reduced to half of that given individually by each instrument taken alone. This is how a power plus an analogous power equals together with it but half a power; and thus we are forced to admit that one and one do not necessarily make two.
I have carried the experiment still farther; in the instrument which gained me a first-class medal at the exhibition of 1854, I was enabled to put thirty-six strings of the same piano into unison at once. Well! All these strings, struck simultaneously, did not attain to the intensity of sound produced by one of them struck singly. All these sounds, far from gaining strength by union, reciprocally neutralized one another. This is not logical, I admit; but we must submit to it.
Logic must be silent and reason bow before the brutal force of a fact to which there is no objection to be raised.
Since we are on the subject of the phenomena of sonority, let us draw another illustration from it, quite as overwhelming in its illogicalness as the former.
When two similar phenomena differ from one another on any side, the discord brought about by this difference is more apparent and more striking by reason of the closer conjunction of these phenomena. By way of compensation the dissimilarity is less appreciable in proportion as these phenomena are farther apart from each other.
This is rigorously logical and perfectly conformable to reason; yet there are cases where we must affirm the contrary. Thus the same sound produced, I will suppose, by two flutes not in accord with one another, forms those disagreeable pulsations in the air which discordant sounds inevitably produce. There seems to be no doubt that by gradually bringing these discordant instruments together, the falseness of their relation must be more and more striking, more and more intolerable. Wrong! For then, and above all if the mouths of these instruments be concentrically directed, a mutual translocation is produced between the two discordant sounds, which restores the accuracy of their agreement. Thus the lower sound is raised, while the higher one is lowered, in such a way that the two sounds are mingled on meeting and form a perfect unison. Now, here are contrasts, which, contrary to all rational data, so far from being exaggerated by contact, diminish gradually, until they are utterly annihilated. Thus, then, given two instruments of the same nature, if the harmony which they effect be true, they enter by reason of their conjunction into a negative state which neutralizes their sonority; while the contrary occurs in the case of false unison. Here the instruments become identical with one another, the sonority is increased and the tonal deviation is corrected to the most perfect harmony.
Obstinate rationalists, what is your logic worth here? Has it armed you against the surprises held in store for you by a multitude of facts inaccordant with your reasonings? Oh, proud and haughty reason, bow your head! Confess the inanity of your ways. Bow yet, once again, and contemplate the mystery whence luminous instruction shall beam for you!
At bottom these mysteries may surprise and baffle a reason deprived of principle; but they are never contrary to it, because they proceed from reason itself, from that Supreme Reason which created us in its own image; and, by that very fact, is always in accord with individual reason in so far as this will consent to sacrifice its own prejudices to it, or listen to its infallible lessons.
But man's reason most frequently heeds itself alone. Thence, once again, arise its infirmities. Thus, what will happen, if, because the truths which I utter here are obscure and do not at the first glance appear to conform to the requirements of logic, you hastily reject them with all the loftiness of your scornful reason, which would blush to admit what it did not understand! Poor reason! which in and of itself understands so little, and admits so many follies as soon as a scholar affirms them. The consequence will be that you will be strengthened in the error which flatters your ignorance. Behold that proud reason which would never bend before a mystery revealed, behold it, I say, bowed beneath the weight of prejudices, which there will be more than one scholar, more than one logician, ready to endorse.
Thus reason will refuse as unworthy itself, all belief in the actions of God or of unseen spirits, the angels, heaven, but will not dare to doubt the existence of moving atoms, invisible corpuscles. This is the mental poverty into which the enemies of religious faith unwittingly fall. They pervert that instrument of reason whose true use is to supplement and fortify imperfect intelligence, and misuse it to discredit and overthrow the original intuitions of intelligence.