Page:The Function of Reason.pdf/18



From the point of view of prevalent physiological doctrine this thesis is a complete heresy. To the older discussions mentioned earlier — Faith and Reason, Reason and Authority, and so on — I should have added one other, Physiology and Final Causation. When we have added that item, we have placed the discussion of Reason in its modern setting.

In fact we have now before us the two contrasted ways of considering Reason. We can think of it as one among the operations involved in the existence of an animal body, and we can think of it in abstraction from any particular animal operations. In this latter mode of consideration, Reason is the operation of theoretical realization. In theoretical realization the Universe, or at least factors in it, are understood in their character of exemplifying a theoretical system. Reason realizes the possibility of some complex form of definiteness, and concurrently understands the world as, in one of its factors, exemplifying that form of definiteness.

The older controversies have mainly to do with this latter mode of considering Reason. For them, Reason is the godlike faculty which surveys, judges and understands. In the newer controversy Reason is one of the items of operation implicated in the welter of the process. It is obvious that the two points of view must be brought together, if the theoretical Reason is to be satisfied as to its own status. But much confusion is occasioned by inconsistently wavering between the two standpoints without any coordination of them. There is Reason,