CHAPTER V.
Shewing that all the mutability of our tempers, the disorders of our passions, the corruption of our hearts, all the reveries of the imagination, all the contradictions and absurdities that are to be found in human life, and human opinions, are in effect the mutability, disorders, corruption, and absurdities of human reason.
IT is the intent of this chapter to shew, that altho’ common language ascribes a variety of faculties and principles to the soul, imputing this action to the blindness of our passions, that to the inconstancy of our tempers; one thing to the heat of our imagination, another to the coolness of our reason; yet, in strictness of truth, every thing that is done by us, is the action and operation of our reason, and is to be ascribed to it, as the sole principle from whence it proceeded, and by which it is governed and effected.
And the different degrees of reason are in men, as the different degrees of love and aversion; as the different degrees of wit, parts, good nature, or ill nature, are in man.
And as all men have naturally more or less of these qualities, so all men have naturally more or less reason: and the bulk of mankind are as different in reason, as they are in these qualities.
As love is the same passion in all men, yet is infinitely different; as hatred is the same passion in all men, yet with infinite differences; so reason is the same faculty in all men, yet with infinite differences.
And as our passions not only make us different from other men, but frequently and almost daily different from ourselves, loving and hating under great inconstancy; so our reason is not only different from the reason of other men, but is often different from itself; by a strange inconstancy, setting up first one opinion, and then another.
So that when we talk of human reason, or a reason common to mankind, we talk of as various, uncertain, and unmeasurable a thing, as when we talk of a love, an aversion, a good nature, or ill nature, common to mankind; for these qualities admit of no variation, uncertainty, or mutability, but such as they directly receive from the reason of mankind.
For it is as much the reason of man that acts in all these tempers, and makes them to be just what they are, as it is the reason of man that demonstrates a mathematical proposition.
Was our reason steady, there would be just the same steadiness and regularity in our tempers; did not reason fall into follies and absurdities, we should have nothing foolish or absurd in our love or aversion. For every humour, every kind of love or aversion, is as strictly the action or operation of our reason, as judgment is the act of our reason.