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The Life of Reason Or the Phases of Human Progress ^%l^ UNIVERSITY of CALnUiM-iir. AT LOS ANGELES LIBRARY THE LIFE OF REASON OR THE PHASES OF HUMAN PROGRESS BY GEORGE SANTAYANA INTRODUCTION AND REASON IN COMMON SENSE ij yap vov evtpyeia ^corj NEW YORK •CHARLES SCRIBNP:R'S SONS 192Q Copyright, 1905, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Published, February, 1906 ::97 4 — J6 94. i Red y qcown CONTENTS INTRODUCTION THE SUBJECT OP THIS WORK, ITS METHOD AND ANTE- CEDENTS 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 fruits in consciousness.—It is the sum of Art.—It has a natural basis which makes it definable.—Modern philosophy not helpful.—Positivism no positive ideal. Christian philosophy mythical: it misrepresents facts and conditions.—Liberal theology a superstitious attitude toward a natural world.—The Greeks thought straight in both physics and morals.—Heraclitus and the imme- diate.—Democritus and the naturally intelligible. Socrates and the autonomy of mind.—Plato gave the ideal its full expression.—Aristotle supplied its natural basis.—Philosophy thus complete, yet in need of re- statement.—Plato's myths in lieu of physics.—Aristotle's final causes. —Modem science can avoid such expedi- ents.—^Transcendentalism true but inconsequential. Verbal ethics. —Spinoza and the Life of Reason.—Mod- em and classic sources of inspiration Pages 1-32 REASON IN COMMON SENSE CHAPTER I THE BIRTH OF REASON 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 interests which determine the moral — Vi CONTENTS status of all powers.—The discovered conditions of reason not its beginning.—The flux first.—Life the fixation of interests. —Primary dualities. —First gropings.—Instinct the nucleus of reason.—Better and worse the fundamental categories Pages 35-47 CHAPTER II FIRST STEPS AND FIRST FLUCTUATIONS Dreams before thoughts.—The mind vegetates uncon- trolled save by physical forces.—Internal order super- venes.—Intrinsic pleasure in existence.—Pleasure a good, but not pursued or remembered unless it suffuses an object. —Subhuman delights.—Animal living.—Causes at last discerned.—Attention guided by bodily impulse. Pages 48-63 CHAPTER III THE DISCOVERY OF NATURAL OBJECTS Nature man's home.—Difficulties in conceiving nature. —Transcendental qualms.—Thought an aspect of life and transitive.—Perception cumulative and synthetic.—Xo identical agent needed.—Example of the sun.—His prim- itive divinity.—Causes and essences contrasted.—Voracity of intellect.—Can the transcendent be known?—Can the immediate be meant?—Is thought a bridge from sensa- tion to sensation? Mens naturaliter platonica.—Identity and independence predicated of things Pages 64-S3 CHAPTER IV ON SOME CRITICS OF THIS DISCOVERT Psychology' as a solvent.—Misconceived role of intel- ligence.—All criticism dogmatic.—A choice of hypoth- eses.—Critics disguised enthusiasts.—Hume's gratuitous scepticism.—Kant's substitute for knowledge.—False sub- jectivity attributed to reason.—Chimerical reconstruc- tion. —The Critique a work on mental architecture.- - Incoherences.—Nature the true system of conditions.-- —• CONTENTS Vii Artificial pathos in subjectivism.—Berkeley's algebra of perception.—Horror of physics.—Puerility in morals. Truism and sophism.—Reality is the practical made intelligible.—Vain "realities" and trustworthy "fic- tions " Pages 84-117 CHAPTER V NATURE UNIFIED AND MIND DISCERNED 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.—Hypos- tasis and criticism both need control.—Comparative con- stancy in objects and in ideas.—Spirit and sense defined by their relation to nature.—Vague notions of nature in- volve vague notions of spirit.—Sense and spirit the life of nature, which science redistributes but does not deny. Pages 118-136 CHAPTER VI DISCOVERT OF FELLOW-MINDS Another background for current experience may be found in alien minds.—Two usual accounts of this con- ception criticised: analogy between bodies, and dramatic dialogue in the soul. —Subject and object empirical, not transcendental, terms.—Objects originally soaked in sec- ondary and tertiary qualities. —Tertiary qualities trans- posed.—Imputed mind consists of the tertiary qualities of perceived body —"Pathetic fallacy" normal, yet ordinarily fallacious.—Case where it is not a fallacy. — Knowledge succeeds only by accident.—Limits of insight. —Perception of character.—Conduct divined, conscious- ness ignored.—Consciousness untrustworthy.—Metaphor- ical mind.—Summary Pages 137-160 CHAPTER VII CONCRETIONS IN DISCOURSE AND IN EXISTENCE So-called abstract quaUties primary. —General quali- ties prior to particular things.—Universals are concretions in discourse. —Similar reactions, merged in one habit of reproduction, yield an idea.—Ideas are ideal.—So-called —- viii CONTENTS abstractions complete facts.—Things concretions of con- cretions.—Ideas prior in the order of knowledge, things in the order of nature.—Aristotle's compromise.—Empiri- cal bias in favour of contiguity.—Artificial divorce of logic from practice.—Their mutual involution.—Rationalistic suicide.—Complementary character of essence and exist- ence Pages 161-183 CHAPTER VIII ^ ON THE EEIiATIVE VALUE OF THINGS AND IDEAS Moral tone of opinions derived from their logical principle.—Concretions in discourse express instinctive re- actions.—Idealism rudimentary.—Naturalism sad.—The soul akin to the eternal and ideal.—Her inexperience. Platonism spontaneous.—Its essential fidelity to the ideal.—Equal rights of empiricism.—Logic dependent on fact for its importance, and for its subsistence. Reason and docility.—Applicable thought and clarified experience Pages 184-204 CHAPTER IX HOW THOUGHT IS PRACTICAL Functional relations of mind and body.—They form one natural life. —Artifices involved in separating them.—Con- sciousness expresses vital equilibrium and docility.— Its worthlessness as a cause and value as an expression.— Thought's march automatic and thereby implicated in events.—Contemplative essence of action.—^Mechanical efficacy alien to thought's essence.—Consciousness trans- cendental and transcendent.—It is the seat of value. —Apparent utility of pain.—Its real impotence.—Pre- formations involved.—Its untoward significance.—Perfect function not unconscious.—Inchoate ethics.—Thought the entelechy of being.—Its exuberance. Pages 205-235 CHAPTER X THE MEASURE OF VALUES IN REFLECTION •J Honesty in hedonism.—Necessary qualifications.—^The will must judge.—Injustice inherent in representation. ^Esthetic and speculative cruelty.—Imputed values : their — CONTENTS ix inconstancy.—Methods of control.—Example of fame. Disproportionate interest in the aesthetic. —Irrational religious allegiance.—Pathetic idealisations.—Inevitable impulsiveness in prophecy.—^The test a controlled present ideal Pages 236-255 CHAPTER XI SOME ABSTRACT CONDITION8 OF THE IDEAL The ultimate end a resultant.—Demands the substance of ideals. —Discipline of the will. —Demands made prac- tical and consistent.—The ideal natural.—Need of unity and finality.—Ideals of nothing.—Darwin on moral sense. —Conscience and reason compared.—Reason imposes no new sacrifice.—Natural goods attainable and compatible in principle.—Harmony the formal and intrinsic demand of reason Pages 256-268 CHAPTER XII FLUX AND CONSTANCY IN HUMAN NATURE Respectable tradition that human nature is fixed. Contrary currents of opinion.—Pantheism.—Instability in existences does not dethrone their ideals.—Absolutist philosophy human and halting.—All science a deliverance of momentary thought.—All criticism likewise.—Origins inessential.—Ideals functional.—They are transferable to similar beings.—Authority internal.—Reason autonomous. —Its distribution.—Natural selection of minds.—Living stability.—Continuity necessary to progress.—Limits of variation. Spirit a heritage.—Perfectibility.—Nature and human nature.—Human nature formulated.—Its concrete description reserved for the sequel Pages 269-291 1 y INTRODUCTION THE SUBJECT OF THIS WORK, ITS METHOD AND ANTECEDENTS Progress is Whatever forces may govern human relative to an jifg^ jf they are to be recognised b ideal • which , , , ,i i i reflection man, must betray themselves m human. creates. experience. Progress in science or re-*! ligion, no less than in morals and art, is a dra- matic episode in man's career, a welcome variation in his habit and state of mind ; although this vari- ation may often regard or propitiate things exter- nal, adjustment to which may be important for his welfare. The importance of these external things, as well as their existence, he can estab- lish only by the function and utility which a rec- ognition of them may have in his life. The en- tire history of progress is a moral drama, a tale man might unfold in a great autobiography, could his myriad heads and countless scintillas of con- sciousness conspire, like the seventy Alexandrian sages, in a single version of the truth committed to each for interpretation. What themes would prevail in such an examination of heart? In what order and with what emphasis would they be recounted? In which of its adventures would Vol. I.— 1 2 THE LIFE OF REASON the human race, reviewing its whole experience, acknowledge a progress and a gain? To answer these questions, as they may be answered specu- latively and provisionally
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