Page:The Function of Reason.pdf/19

 asserting itself as above the world, and there is Reason as one of many factors within the world. The Greeks have bequeathed to us two figures, whose real or mythical lives conform to these two notions — Plato and Ulysses. The one shares Reason with the Gods, the other shares it with the foxes.

We can combine the discussion of these two aspects of Reason by considering the relevance of the notion of final causation to the behavior of animal bodies. We shall then see how the theoretical and practical Reason in fact operate in the minds of men.

Those physiologists who voice the common opinion of their laboratories, tell us with practical unanimity that no consideration of final causes should be allowed to intrude into the science of physiology. In this respect physiologists are at one with Francis Bacon at the beginning of the scientific epoch, and also with the practice of all the natural sciences.

In this rejection of final causation the testimony seems overwhelming, until we remember that it is testimony of exactly the same force and character as that which led the educated section of the classical world to reject the Christian outlook, and as that which led the educated scholastic world to reject the novel scientific outlook of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We have got to remember the two aspects of Reason, the Reason of Plato and the Reason of Ulysses, Reason as seeking a