Page:The Function of Reason.pdf/27

 has taken an upward trend: if unhappy, the oblivion of time covers the vestiges of a vanished race.

With a happy choice, the new method quickly reaches its meridian stage. There is thus a new form of the good life, with its prolongation depending on the variety of contrast included within its methodical scope. On the whole, the evidence points to a certain speed of evolution from a nascent methodology into the middle stage which is relatively prolonged.

In the former event, when the species refuses adventure, there is relapse into the well-attested habit of mere life. The original method now enters upon a prolonged old age in which well-being has sunk back into mere being. Varied freshness has been lost, and the species lives upon the blind appetitions of old usages. The essence of Reason in its lowliest forms is its judgments upon flashes of novelty, of novelty in immediate realization and of novelty which is relevant to appetition but not yet to action. In the stabilized life there is no room for Reason. The methodology has sunk from a method of novelty into a method of repetition. Reason is the organ of emphasis upon novelty. It provides the judgment by which realization in idea obtains the emphasis by which it passes into realization in purpose, and thence its realization in fact.

Life-tedium is fatigue derived from a thwarted urge toward novel contrast. In nature we find three ways in which stabilization is secured. They may be named: the Way of Blindness, the Way of Rhythm,