Every thing therefore that is done, every thing that is chosen in human life before any thing else, is as strictly chosen by reason, as every thing that is seen, is seen by the eye; and every thing that is heard, is heard by the ear.
To suppose that reason permits itself to be governed by passions or tempers, but is not the immediate agent of all that is done by them, is as absurd, as to suppose that reason permits itself to be governed by the hand when it is writing falsly, or the tongue, when it is talking profanely, but it is not the immediate, direct agent of all that is written and spoken by them.
* Brutes are incapable of immorality, because none of their actions are the actions of reason: every thing therefore that is immorality, baseness, or villainy in us, must be the act of our reason, otherwise it could no more be immoral, than the actions of brutes.
* If therefore, as this author often saith, reason be the only faculty that distinguisheth us from brutes; it necessarily follows, that those irregularities, whether of humour, passions, or tempers, which cannot be imputed to brutes, must be solely attributed to that faculty by which we are distinguished from brutes; and consequently, every thing that is foolish, vain, shameful, false, treacherous, and base, must be the acts of our reason; since if they were the acts of any thing else, they could have no more vanity, falseness, or baseness, than hunger and thirst.
It is not my intent to condemn our common language, which talks of reason and the passions, as if they were as different as a governor and his subjects.
These forms of speech are very intelligible and useful, and give great life and ornament to all discourses upon morality.
But when persons ascribe to reason, as a distinct faculty of human nature, I know not what absolute perfection, making it as immutable, and incapable of any addition or improvement, as God himself: it is necessary to consider reason, not as it is represented in common language, but as it is in reality in itself.
Notwithstanding therefore in common language, our passions, and the effects of them, are usefully distinguished from our reason, I have here ventured to shew, that all the disorders of human nature, are in effect the disorders of human reason, and that all the perfection or imperfection of our passions is the perfection or imperfection of our reason.
Our follies and absurdities of every kind are as necessarily to be ascribed to our reason, as the first immediate cause of them, as our wisdom and discretion are to be ascribed to it in that degree.
The difference between reason assenting to the properties of a square, and reason acting in motions of desire or aversion, is only this, that in the latter case, it is reason acting under a sense of its own good or evil, in the former case, it is reason acting under a sense of magnitude.