Essays in Rationalism

by Charles Robert Newman

Every human inquiry that asks, What is right, proper, or correct? necessarily, in doing so, asks, What is it reasonable to think, believe, or do? in the points inquired into. The faculty—whatever may be its nature—whereby we find ourselves able, under certain circumstances, to answer this question, we call reason. The rights of reason may be said to consist in the concession to it of a certain absolute power in the decision of truth, divisible under two heads thus—a power of deciding what are the questions whereon it is able to decide, and a power of deciding those questions.

One of the many ways of disparaging the rights of reason is—openly or covertly to doubt or deny that morals, metaphysics, and religion, are—in the full sense of the word—sciences. This is to withdraw them from the empire of reason, and to hand them over to some rival pretender.

No science can flourish while it is understood that its discussion must be made palatable to the public. In any supposable code of the rights of reason, one primary article would limit and define the functions of the public in the investigation of truth—a topic which, together with the kindred inquiry, Who are the public? is suggested by your second query.

Mankind have naturally a degree of antipathy for reason. They have found Reason, in the work he affects, dull, in the help he furnishes, deficient, in the truth he unveils, ugly, in the rule he arrogates, imperious. Barbarism, in all its stages, may be said to be founded, not merely on ignorance, but on a state of the inclinations that revolts from reason.

Two competitors have always disputed the rights of reason; authority or precedent, and faith or conscience. Conscience, early or late, must receive almost all his light from authority; and, therefore, in respect to opinion, may generally be called the creature of authority. Yet, in a moral aspect, authority is confessedly of no account, and conscience has a sole jurisdiction. A large portion of mankind have, in our times, outgrown the error of resting their sense of duty on the mere dictate of other men. The only legitimate directors of human conduct are now generally admitted to be conscience and reason; the conscience must be exclusively one’s own, but the reason need not entirely—and, indeed, cannot in any great proportion—be one’s own, but may be partly that of one’s neighbor.

The question of the division of power between these two potentates, though not yet understood by the public, does not seem to be more complicated than that analogous one just alluded to, and of which they evidently understand the gist.

For authority, as above intimated, though the venerable instructor of conscience, is yet morally subjected to him; and, not dissimilarly, have conscience and reason reciprocal claims of precedence on each other. Reason is the judge, but he is bound, under conscience, to give a sufficient and attentive hearing to any pleadings that conscience may have to offer, and conscience is the pleader, but he is bound, under reason, to conform to whatever verdicts reason declares himself competent to render.

If history in this particular can be considered as having disclosed a necessary sequence, civilisation progresses in the following order:—The general mind, in becoming acquainted with its own powers, first learns an evolution of conscience (and this can only take place through the medium of religion), and last learns to appreciate reason (and this can only happen through the medium of science). While the prerogatives of conscience were insufficiently known, authority usurped them, and while the prerogatives of reason are insufficiently known, authority and conscience conjointly usurp them.

The word conscience I here use in its proper sense, wherein it means either an individual conscience, or the united consciences of more than one supposed to be in accord together, so as to make the acts resulting from this accord constitute single acts of conscience. But the word has taken an improper enlargement of meaning in being often used to signify one conscience claiming something in contravention of another conscience. These two, so different meanings of the word conscience, are seldom duly discriminated by those who use them.

To the rights of reason belongs a certain degree of power, both in regulating the individual conscience, and in solving the differences between opposing ones. Under what conditions, and how far, reason can exercise this office, and what rule he is to follow in so doing, would be an inquiry suggested by my answer to your second query.