The Life of Reason 1 The Life of Reason The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Life of Reason, by George Santayana This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re−use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: The Life of Reason Author: George Santayana Release Date: February 14, 2005 [eBook #15000] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO−8859−1 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF REASON*** E−text prepared by Marilynda Fraser−Cunliffe, Garrett Alley, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team THE LIFE OF REASON The Phases of Human Progress In Five Volumes by GEORGE SANTAYANA hê gar noy enhergeia zôhê Dover Publication, Inc. New York CONTENTS Volume I. REASON IN COMMON SENSE Volume II. REASON IN SOCIETY Volume III. REASON IN RELIGION Volume IV. REASON IN ART Volume V. REASON IN SCIENCE REASON IN COMMON SENSE CHAPTER I 2 Volume One of "The Life of Reason" GEORGE SANTAYANA hê gar noy enhergeia zôhê This Dover edition, first published in 1980, is an unabridged republication of volume one of _The Life of Reason; or the Phases of Human Progress_, originally published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1905. This volume contains the general introduction to the entire five−volume series. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION THE SUBJECT OF THIS WORK, ITS METHOD AND ANTECEDENTS Pages 1−32 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 immediate.−−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 restatement.−−Plato's myths in lieu of physics.−−Aristotle's final causes.−−Modern science can avoid such expedients.−−Transcendentalism true but inconsequential.−−Verbal ethics.−−Spinoza and the Life of Reason.−−Modern and classic sources of inspiration REASON IN COMMON SENSE CHAPTER I −−THE BIRTH OF REASON Pages 35−47 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 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 CHAPTER II −−FIRST STEPS AND FIRST FLUCTUATIONS Pages 48−63 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 remembered unless it suffuses an object.−−Subhuman delights.−−Animal living.−−Causes at last discerned.−−Attention guided by bodily impulse CHAPTER III −−THE DISCOVERY OF NATURAL OBJECTS Pages 64−83 Nature man's home.−−Difficulties in conceiving nature.−−Transcendental qualms.−−Thought an aspect of life and transitive.−−Perception CHAPTER IV 3 cumulative and synthetic.−−No identical agent needed.−−Example of the sun.−−His primitive divinity.−−Causes and essences contrasted.−−Voracity of intellect.−−Can the transcendent be known?−−Can the immediate be meant?−−Is thought a bridge from sensation to sensation?−−Mens naturaliter platonica.−−Identity and independence predicated of things CHAPTER IV −−ON SOME CRITICS OF THIS DISCOVERY Pages 84−117 Psychology as a solvent.−−Misconceived rôle of intelligence.−−All criticism dogmatic.−−A choice of hypotheses.−−Critics disguised enthusiasts.−−Hume's gratuitous scepticism.−−Kant's substitute for knowledge.−−False subjectivity attributed to reason.−−Chimerical reconstruction.−−The Critique a work on mental architecture.−−Incoherences.−−Nature the true system of conditions.−−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 "fictions" CHAPTER V −−NATURE UNIFIED AND MIND DISCERNED Pages 118−136 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 both need control.−−Comparative constancy in objects and in ideas.−−Spirit and sense defined by their relation to nature.−−Vague notions of nature involve vague notions of spirit.−−Sense and spirit the life of nature, which science redistributes but does not deny CHAPTER VI −−DISCOVERY OF FELLOW−MINDS Pages 137−160 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 soul.−−Subject and object empirical, not transcendental, terms.−−Objects originally soaked in secondary and tertiary qualities.−−Tertiary qualities transposed.−−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, consciousness ignored.−−Consciousness untrustworthy.−−Metaphorical mind.−−Summary CHAPTER VII −−CONCRETIONS IN DISCOURSE AND IN EXISTENCE Pages 161−183 So−called abstract qualities primary.−−General qualities 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 abstractions complete facts.−−Things concretions of concretions.−−Ideas prior in the order of knowledge, things in the order of nature.−−Aristotle's compromise.−−Empirical bias in favour of contiguity.−−Artificial divorce of logic from practice.−−Their mutual involution.−−Rationalistic suicide.−−Complementary character of essence and existence CHAPTER VIII 4 CHAPTER VIII −−ON THE RELATIVE VALUE OF THINGS AND IDEAS Pages 184−204 Moral tone of opinions derived from their logical principle.−−Concretions in discourse express instinctive reactions.−−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 CHAPTER IX −−HOW THOUGHT IS PRACTICAL Pages 205−235 Functional relations of mind and body.−−They form one natural life.−−Artifices involved in separating them.−−Consciousness 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 transcendental and transcendent.−−It is the seat of value.−−Apparent utility of pain.−−Its real impotence.−−− Preformations involved.−−Its untoward significance.−−Perfect function not unconscious.−−Inchoate ethics.−−Thought the entelechy of being.−−Its exuberance CHAPTER X −−THE MEASURE OF VALUES IN REFLECTION Pages 236−255 Honesty in hedonism.−−Necessary qualifications.−−The will must judge.−−Injustice inherent in representation.−−Æsthetic and speculative cruelty.−−Imputed values: their inconstancy.−−Methods of control.−−Example of fame.−−Disproportionate interest in the æsthetic.−−Irrational religious allegiance.−−Pathetic idealisations.−−Inevitable impulsiveness in prophecy.−−The test a controlled present ideal CHAPTER XI −−SOME ABSTRACT CONDITIONS OF THE IDEAL Pages 256−268 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.−−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 CHAPTER XII −−FLUX AND CONSTANCY IN HUMAN NATURE Pages 269−291 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 Introduction to "The Life of Reason" [Sidenote: Progress is relative to an ideal which reflection creates.] CHAPTER VIII 5 Whatever forces may govern human life, if they are to be recognised by man, must betray themselves in human experience.