The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress

If psychology is a science, many things that books of psychology contain should be excluded from it. One is social imagination. Nature, besides having a mechanical form and wear...

When Socrates and his two great disciples composed a system of rational ethics they were hardly proposing practical legislation for mankind. One by his irony, another by his fra...

Science is so new a thing and so far from final, it seems to the layman so hopelessly accurate and extensive, that a moralist may well feel some diffidence in trying to estimate...

The English psychologists who first disintegrated the idea of substance, and whose traces we have in general followed in the above account, did not study the question wholly for...

When Democritus proclaimed the sovereignty of mechanism, he did so in the oracular fashion proper to an ancient sage. He found it no harder to apply his atomic theory to the min...

Respectable tradition that human nature is fixed.—Contrary currents of opinion.—Pantheism.—Instability in existences does not dethrone their ideals.—Absolutist philosophy human...

If man were a static or intelligible being, such as angels are thought to be, his life would have a single guiding interest, under which all other interests would be subsumed. H...

Nothing is more natural or more congruous with all the analogies of experience than that animals should feel and think. The relation of mind to body, of reason to nature, seems...

The human spirit has not passed in historical times through a more critical situation or a greater revulsion than that involved in accepting Christianity. Was this event favoura...

The least artificial extension of common knowledge is history. Personal recollection supplies many an anecdote, anecdotes collected and freely commented upon make up memoirs, an...

There is both truth and illusion in the saying that primitive poets are sublime. Genesis and the Iliad (works doubtless backed by a long tradition) are indeed sublime. Primitive...

We have seen how arts founded on exercise and automatic self-expression develop into music, poetry, and prose. By an indirect approach they come to represent outer conditions, t...

In moral reprobation there is often a fanatical element, I mean that hatred which an animal may sometimes feel for other animals on account of their strange aspect, or because t...

We have seen that the family, an association useful in rearing the young, may become a means of further maintenance and defence. It is the first economic and the first military...

The western intellect, in order to accept the gospel, had to sublimate it into a neo-Platonic system of metaphysics. In like manner the western heart had to render Christianity...

“To him that hath shall be given,” says the Gospel, representing as a principle of divine justice one that undoubtedly holds in earthly economy. A not dissimilar observation is...

A retrospect over human experience, if a little extended, can hardly fail to come upon many interesting recurrences. The seasons make their round and the generations of men, lik...

It is no longer the fashion among philosophers to decry art. Either its influence seems to them too slight to excite alarm, or their systems are too lax to subject anything to c...

Dogmatism in matters of taste has the same status as dogmatism in other spheres. It is initially justified by sincerity, being a systematic expression of a man’s preferences; bu...

Love is but a prelude to life, an overture in which the theme of the impending work is exquisitely hinted at, but which remains nevertheless only a symbol and a promise. What is...

Sound readily acquires ideal values. It has power in itself to engross attention and at the same time may be easily diversified, so as to become a symbol for other things. Its d...

The mythical social idea most potent over practical minds is perhaps the idea of country. When a tribe, enlarged and domiciled, has become a state, much social feeling that was...

When a ghostly sphere, containing memory and all ideas, has been distinguished from the material world, it tends to grow at the expense of the latter, until nature is finally re...

In order to give the will to live frank and direct satisfaction, it would have been necessary to solve the problem of perpetual motion in the animal body, as nature has approxim...

When a polyglot person is speaking, foreign words sometimes occur to him, which he at once translates into the language he happens to be using. Somewhat in the same way, when di...

A conception of something called human nature arises not unnaturally on observing the passions of men, passions which under various disguises seem to reappear in all ages and co...

Imitation is a fertile principle in the Life of Reason. We have seen that it furnishes the only rational sanction for belief in any fellow mind; now we shall see how it creates...

Ideas of material objects ordinarily absorb the human mind, and their prevalence has led to the rash supposition that ideas of all other kinds are posterior to physical ideas an...

The advantage which the mechanical sciences have over history is drawn from their mathematical form. Mathematics has somewhat the same place in physics that conscience has in ac...

Natural society unites beings in time and space; it fixes affection on those creatures on which we depend and to which our action must be adapted. Natural society begins at home...

To many beings—to almost all that people the earth and sky—each soul is not attached by any practical interest. Some are too distant to be perceived; the proximity of others pas...

That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject. To recognise an external power it is requisite that we should find the i...

The word democracy may stand for a natural social equality in the body politic or for a constitutional form of government in which power lies more or less directly in the people...

In honouring the sources of life, piety is retrospective. It collects, as it were, food for morality, and fortifies it with natural and historic nutriment. But a digestive and f...

That magic and mythology have no experimental sanction is clear so soon as experience begins to be gathered together with any care. As magic attempts to do work by incantations,...

At no point are the two ingredients of religion, superstition and moral truth, more often confused than in the doctrine of immortality, yet in none are they more clearly disting...

Common knowledge passes from memory to history and from history to mechanism; and having reached that point it may stop to look back, not without misgivings, over the course it...

Those who look back upon the history of opinion for many centuries commonly feel, by a vague but profound instinct, that certain consecrated doctrines have an inherent dignity a...

Primitive thought has the form of poetry and the function of prose. Being thought, it distinguishes objects from the experience that reveals them and it aspires to know things a...

At first sight it might seem an idle observation that the first task of intelligence is to represent the environing reality, a reality actually represented in the notion, univer...

To put value in pleasure and pain, regarding a given quantity of pain as balancing a given quantity of pleasure, is to bring to practical ethics a worthy intention to be clear a...

Music rationalises sound, but a more momentous rationalising of sound is seen in language. Language is one of the most useful of things, yet the greater part of it still remains...

When the mind has learned to distinguish external objects and to attribute to them a constant size, shape, and potency, in spite of the variety and intermittence ruling in direc...

The same despair or confusion which, when it overtakes human purposes, seeks relief in arbitrary schemes of salvation, when it overtakes human knowledge, may breed arbitrary sub...

Revolutions are ambiguous things. Their success is generally proportionate to their power of adaptation and to the reabsorption within them of what they rebelled against. A thou...

If there were anything wholly instrumental or merely useful its rationality, such as it was, would be perfectly obvious. Such a thing would be exhaustively defined by its result...

Consciousness is a born hermit. Though subject, by divine dispensation, to spells of fervour and apathy, like a singing bird, it is at first quite unconcerned about its own cond...

The greatest enemy harmony can have is a premature settlement in which some essential force is wholly disregarded. This excluded element will rankle in the flesh; it will bring...

Hebraism is a striking example of a religion tending to discard mythology and magic. It was a Hebraising apostle who said that true religion and undefiled was to visit the fathe...

Man exists amid a universal ferment of being, and not only needs plasticity in his habits and pursuits but finds plasticity also in the surrounding world. Life is an equilibrium...

Those whom a genuine spirituality has freed from the foolish enchantment of words and conventions and brought back to a natural ideal, have still another illusion to vanquish, o...

We need not impose upon ourselves the endless and repulsive task of describing all the superstitions that have existed in the world. In his impotence and laziness the natural ma...

As the Vedas offer a glimpse into the antecedents of Greek mythology, so Hebrew studies open up vistas into the antecedents of Christian dogma. Christianity in its Patristic for...

Whether Chaos or Order lay at the beginning of things is a question once much debated in the schools but afterward long in abeyance, not so much because it had been solved as be...

Experience has repeatedly confirmed that well-known maxim of Bacon’s, that “a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds abo...

Reason’s function is to embody the good, but the test of excellence is itself ideal; therefore before we can assure ourselves that reason has been manifested in any given case w...

Action which is purely spontaneous is merely tentative. Any experience of success or utility which might have preceded, if it availed to make action sure, would avail to make it...

The preceding analysis of religion, although it is illustrated mainly by Christianity, may enable us in a general way to distinguish the rational goal of all religious life. In...

Progress is relative to an ideal which reflection creates.—Efficacious reflection is reason.—The Life of Reason a name for all practical thought and all action justified by its...

Mind reading not science.—Experience a reconstruction.—The honest art of education.—Arbitrary readings of the mind.—Human nature appealed to rather than described.—Dialectic in...

Force of primary expressions.—Its exclusiveness and narrowness.—Rudimentary poetry an incantation or charm.—Inspiration irresponsible.—Plato’s discriminating view.—Explosive and...

The creative social environment, since it eludes sense, must be represented symbolically.—Ambiguous limits of a native country, geographical and moral.—Sentimental and political...

Dogmatism is inevitable but may be enlightened.—Taste gains in authority as it is more and more widely based.—Different æsthetic endowments may be compared in quantity or force....

Art is subject to moral censorship.—Its initial or specific excellence is not enough.—All satisfactions, however hurtful, have an initial worth.—But, on the whole, artistic acti...

The gregarious instinct all social instincts in suspense.—It gives rise to conscience or sympathy with the public voice.—Guises of public opinion.—Oracles and revelations.—The i...

Music is a world apart.—It justifies itself.—It is vital and transient.—Its physical affinities.—Physiology of music.—Limits of musical sensibility.—The value of music is relati...

Socratic ethics retrospective.—Rise of disillusioned moralities.—The illusion subsisting in them.—Epicurean refuge in pleasure.—Stoic recourse to conformity.—Conformity the core...

Fluid existences have none but ideal goals.—Nutrition and reproduction.—Priority of the latter.—Love celebrates the initial triumph of form and is deeply ideal.—Difficulty in de...

Need of paganising Christianity.—Catholic piety more human than the liturgy.—Natural pieties.—Refuge taken in the supernatural.—The episodes of life consecrated mystically.—Paga...

Eminence, once existing, grows by its own operation.—Its causes natural and its privileges just.—Advantage of inequality.—Fable of the belly and the members.—Fallacy in it.—Thei...

Democracy as an end and as a means.—Natural democracy leads to monarchy.—Artificial democracy is an extension of privilege.—Ideals and expedients.—Well-founded distrust of ruler...

Sounds well fitted to be symbols.—Language has a structure independent of things.—Words, remaining identical, serve to identify things that change.—Language the dialectical garm...

Psychology of imitation.—Sustained sensation involves reproduction.—Imitative art repeats with intent to repeat, and in a new material.—Imitation leads to adaptation and to know...

The family arises spontaneously.—It harmonises natural interests.—Capacity to be educated goes with immaturity at birth.—The naturally dull achieve intelligence.—It is more bles...

Science still young.—Its miscarriage in Greece.—Its timid reappearance in modern times.—Distinction between science and myth.—Platonic status of hypothesis.—Meaning of verificat...

Patriarchal economy.—Origin of the state.—Three uses of civilisation.—Its rationality contingent.—Sources of wealth.—Excess of it possible.—Irrational industry.—Its jovial and i...

Moral passions represent private interests.—Common ideal interests may supervene.—To this extent there is rational society.—A rational morality not attainable, but its principle...

Fear created the gods.—Need also contributed.—The real evidences of God’s existence.—Practice precedes theory in religion.—Pathetic, tentative nature of religious practices.—Mea...

Suspense between hope and disillusion.—Superficial solution.—But from what shall we be redeemed?—Typical attitude of St. Augustine.—He achieves Platonism.—He identifies it with...

Another background for current experience may be found in alien minds.—Two usual accounts of this conception criticised: analogy between bodies, and dramatic dialogue in the sou...

Automatic expression often leaves traces in the outer world.—Such effects fruitful.—Magic authority of man’s first creations.—Art brings relief from idolatry.—Inertia in techniq...

Functional relations of mind and body.—They form one natural life.—Artifices involved in separating them.—Consciousness expresses vital equilibrium and docility.—Its worthlessne...

Myth should dissolve with the advance of science.—But myth is confused with the moral values it expresses.—Neo-Platonic revision.—It made mythical entities of abstractions.—Hypo...

The length of life a subject for natural science.—“Psychical” phenomena.—Hypertrophies of sense.—These possibilities affect physical existence only.—Moral grounds for the doctri...

Aesthetic harmonies are parodies of real ones, which in turn would be suffused with beauty, yet prototypes of true perfections.—Pros and cons of detached indulgences.—The happy...

Primacy of nature over spirit.—All experience at bottom liberal.—Social experience has its ideality too.—The self an ideal.—Romantic egotism.—Vanity.—Ambiguities of fame.—Its po...

Empirical alloy in dialectic.—Arrested rationality in morals.—Its emotional and practical power.—Moral science is an application of dialectic, not a part of anthropology.—Estima...

History an artificial memory.—Second sight requires control.—Nature the theme common to various memories.—Growth of legend.—No history without documents.—The aim is truth.—Indir...

So-called abstract qualities primary.—General qualities prior to particular things.—Universals are concretions in discourse.—Similar reactions, merged in one habit of reproducti...

Utility is ultimately ideal.—Work wasted and chances missed.—Ideals must be interpreted, not prescribed.—The aim of industry is to live well.—Some arts, but no men, are slaves b...

Dialectic elaborates given forms.—Forms are abstracted from existence by intent.—Confusion comes of imperfect abstraction, or ambiguous intent.—The fact that mathematics applies...

Psychology as a solvent.—Misconceived rôle of intelligence.—All criticism dogmatic.—A choice of hypotheses.—Critics disguised enthusiasts.—Hume’s gratuitous scepticism.—Kant’s s...

Status of fable in the mind.—It requires genius.—It only half deceives.—Its interpretative essence.—Contrast with science.—Importance of the moral factor.—Its submergence.—Myth...

Dialectic better than physics.—Maladjustments to nature render physics conspicuous and unpleasant.—Physics should be largely virtual, and dialectic explicit.—Intent is vital and...

Recurrent forms in nature.—Their discovery makes the flux calculable.—Looser principles tried first.—Mechanism for the most part hidden.—Yet presumably pervasive.—Inadequacy of...

Mechanism restricted to one-half of existence.—Men of science not speculative.—Confusion in semi-moral subjects.—“Physic of metaphysic begs defence.”—Evolution by mechanism.—Evo...

To be spiritual is to live in view of the ideal.—Spirituality natural.—Primitive consciousness may be spiritual.—Spirit crossed by instrumentalities.—One foe of the spirit is wo...

Various modes of revising science.—Science its own best critic.—Obstruction by alien traditions.—Needless anxiety for moral interests.—Science an imaginative and practical art.—...

Man’s feeble grasp of nature.—Its unity ideal and discoverable only by steady thought.—Mind the erratic residue of existence.—Ghostly character of mind.—Hypostasis and criticism...

Existence always has an Order, called Chaos when incompatible with a chosen good.—Absolute order, or truth, is static, impotent, indifferent.—In experience order is relative to...

Nature man’s home.—Difficulties in conceiving nature.—Transcendental qualms.—Thought an aspect of life and transitive.—Perception cumulative and synthetic.—No identical agent ne...

Moral tone of opinions derived from their logical principle.—Concretions in discourse express instinctive reactions.—Idealism rudimentary.—Naturalism sad.—The soul akin to the e...

Man affects his environment, sometimes to good purpose.—Art is plastic instinct conscious of its aims.—It is automatic.—So are the ideas it expresses.—We are said to control wha...

The ultimate end a resultant.—Demands the substance of ideals.—Discipline of the will.—Demands made practical and consistent.—The ideal natural.—Need of unity and finality.—Idea...

Olympian immortality the first ideal.—Its indirect attainment by reproduction.—Moral acceptance of this compromise.—Even vicarious immortality intrinsically impossible.—Intellec...

Religion is certainly significant, but not literally true.—All religion is positive and particular.—It aims at the Life of Reason, but largely fails to attain it.—Its approach i...

The essence of the good not adventitious but expressive.—A universal religion must interpret the whole world.—Double appeal of Christianity.—Hebrew metaphors become Greek myths....

Felt causes not necessary causes.—Mechanism and dialectic ulterior principles.—Early selection of categories.—Tentative rational worlds.—Superstition a rudimentary philosophy.—A...

Honesty in hedonism.—Necessary qualifications.—The will must judge.—Injustice inherent in representation.—Æsthetic and speculative cruelty.—Imputed values: their inconstancy.—Me...

The core of religion not theoretical.—Loyalty to the sources of our being.—The pious Æneas.—An ideal background required.—Piety accepts natural conditions and present tasks.—The...

Possible tyranny of reason.—Everything has its rights.—Primary and secondary morality.—Uncharitable pagan justice is not just.—The doom of ancient republics.—Rational charity.—I...

Dreams before thoughts.—The mind vegetates uncontrolled save by physical forces.—Internal order supervenes.—Intrinsic pleasure in existence.—Pleasure a good, but not pursued or...

Phases of Hebraism.—Israel’s tribal monotheism.—Problems involved.—The prophets put new wine in old bottles.—Inspiration and authority.—Beginnings of the Church.—Bigotry turned...

The failure of magic and of mythology.—Their imaginative value.—Piety and spirituality justified.—Mysticism a primordial state of feeling.—It may recur at any stage of culture.—...

Art is spontaneous action made stable by success.—It combines utility and automatism.—Automatism fundamental and irresponsible.—It is tamed by contact with the world.—The dance....