It has always been, I think, the practice in civilised society to speak
of reason or good sense as in some way influencing action. And of course
it must do so, if, as we suppose, it forms the radical distinction
between man and the lower animals. “Be reasonable,” we say, in reference
to action no less than to speculation. “Wisdom and blood,” says
Shakespeare, “combating in so tender a body, we have ten proofs to one
that blood hath the victory.” Blood here means passion. How does wisdom
or knowledge combat passion? I do not say that wisdom and knowledge mean
the same thing, but if they do not, we should like to know the difference
between them.
In this prevalent notion of the conflict between reason and desire, it
may be observed that reason is, as a rule, supposed to be negative or
prohibitive. “Be reasonable” generally means “give up something you want
very much.” According to one account, the inward monitor of Socrates
was always negative, and throughout moral philosophy, and especially
throughout moralising philosophy, which is not quite the same thing, you
find the point of view that reason conflicts with desire, and has in fact
for its function very much to prevent you doing or caring about whatever
you very particularly want to do or incline to care about. This is what
gives rise to the state of things satirised in the old saying “Any
young man would rather face an imputation on his moral character than
an imputation on his horsemanship.” If moral character means a sort of
detachment from everything, this feeling is both natural and justifiable.
The popular interpretation of Aristotle leans in the direction of this
idea about reason, in so far as the conception of the reason seems to be
connected with commonplace notions about the evils of excess, strongly
represented in Greek proverbial philosophy. It was easy to add to these
ideas the conception of the evils of defect, which is little more than a
verbal refinement on the other. These quantitative expressions have not
much meaning in morality. Unquestionably, I think, the popular aspect of
the Aristotelian doctrine is an idea that you ought not to throw yourself
very deeply into anything. Reason is, in short, according to these
moralistic conceptions, though not according to Aristotle’s fundamental
view, a sort of check upon desire and little more.
This negative character of reason will, I hope, explain itself away as we
proceed. The primary point on which I want to insist is not why reason is
thus treated as negative, but how it comes that reason can be supposed
to conflict with or control desire at all. I speak for the present of
Desire, not of Will, because the meaning of desire is clearer; whereas
it is a doubt, until we have explained the nature of active reason, what
Will is, and whether it is distinguishable from desire.
Now, on the other hand, there is a sentence of Aristotle “Intelligence
as such moves nothing,” and this seems to come home to us quite as
naturally as the idea that reason controls action. All plain or
unambiguous instances of reason or reasoning or intelligence, seem to
deal with discovery of fact, couched in a form which is capable of truth
and falsehood. For our purpose we may treat it as elaborate perception,
whether direct or assisted through inference, such as calculation.
Calculation is the old meaning of reasoning, both in Greek and Latin.
How do we get across from perception or calculation to anything that can
interfere with desire?
Of course there is a meeting-point in the idea that attends desire.
Human desire, at least, is not blind. It is desire of something, which
is before the mind as an idea; and in the case of desire which issues
in action this something must be mentally specified in respect of the
particular means needed to bring it about. And also, the end or purpose
which is desired for its own sake, is, in the connection of cause and
effect, itself _de facto_ a means to other results _ad infinitum_, more
or less of which are foreseen by the person who acts. Thus the act,
as fully presented to the mind in idea, is a complication of external
circumstances, which are ideally distinguished, supposing the act to
be reflected on, as means, realisation of the purpose, and foreseen
consequences both of the means and of the realisation of the purpose.
It is, I think, all-important to remember, that these distinctions are
distinctions of relation to the acting subject, drawn very lightly by the
acting subject on the shifting surface of a complicated set of results
presented in idea, and are not at all complete distinctions, and lend
themselves very readily to self-deception. We shall see the importance of
this remark directly.
In the meantime, here we have one way in which reasonings about fact do
help to modify our actions. If we know distinctly what we desire, say,
a week’s holiday, then it is reasoning about matters of fact that will
tell us what we must do to get it, and, in part, what the results will be
both of our getting it and of what we do to get it. Now for philosophical
purposes we need not consider the foreseen consequences separately. They
must rank, morally, as means. That is to say, they are something which
you have to take into the bargain in order to get what you want. They
come in with all the other circumstances in determining whether you like
the action or not.
Now is _this_ connection between action and reason what we have in mind
when we say that a person ought to act reasonably, or that reason combats
desire? Do we understand by acting reasonably, that assuming some one
part of the imagined circumstances to represent the purpose, the agent
has got all the means to it, and the foreseen consequences of it, and
the interdependence of the parts of the purpose itself, set out in a
connection which is truly perceived or scientifically inferred?
We do sometimes appear to mean this. We say: it is unreasonable to ask me
to be at the station at nine when the train does not start till ten. It
is unreasonable, you may say, on the ground that the means demanded of
me are not, scientifically speaking, necessary to the end agreed upon.
Still more we should pronounce it unreasonable to adopt any means which
actually defeats your purpose; which could only happen, one would think,
either from moral self-deception, or in complicated matters where the
means are disputable. This second case does not matter to us; the first
carries us a little further, because it suggests that what you call the
means may really contain your purpose, or one of your purposes, perhaps
inconsistent with another. The hackneyed example of selfish charity is
as good a case of this unreasonableness as can be found. The gift, which
is professed to be merely a means to the good of another, is, under all
the conditions, a means contrary to that good, and is given because it
gratifies an impulse of the donor. It might seem, in this case again, a
fair explanation to pronounce such conduct unreasonable merely because
the means adopted are scientifically speaking inconsistent with the end
proposed. We might bear in mind, however, that we seem to have detected
here a probable conflict of ends, not merely of means to an end.
Admitting, then, for the moment, that we hold conduct to be unreasonable
if the perception, implied in it, of the relation between means,
ends, and consequences is flagrantly false, do we admit conduct to be
reasonable _simply_ because the intellectual perception in question is
clear and true? Taking truth in its ordinary sense, as truth of simple
fact, we must deny this. I may know perfectly well that so much wine
will make me drunk, and may drink it with that object and with that
result, and yet no one will pronounce this a reasonable action, though my
judgment of facts and results was as true and reasonable as could be. It
may be, however, that in a larger sense true judgment involves reasonable
action.
Thus it does not seem that truth of perception or correctness of
calculation as to the connection of the circumstances which are presented
in the idea of an act are sufficient to make the act reasonable, although
serious blunders in the perception or calculation seem to make the act
which implies them unreasonable. I even doubt whether the last clause
was rightly stated. I was obliged to say _flagrant_ errors, _serious_
blunders. For it seems doubtful whether a purely intellectual error, or
blunder of perception, does make an act “unreasonable,” which owing to
such a blunder misses its mark. I incline to think that the reason why
we are forced, in such cases as I have instanced, to lay stress on the
_flagrancy_ of the blunder, is that it makes us suspect self-deception
or moral neglect on the part of the agent, makes us suspect, in other
words, that the inconsistency between means and ends was not owing to
mere intellectual misjudgment, but was adopted with open or partially
open eyes. I do not think that I _should_ call my friend unreasonable
for wanting to meet at the station an hour before the departure of the
train, if he could show me _bona fide_ grounds which made him imagine
that it was necessary to arrive so early. I might in that case think him
mistaken, but should not venture to call him unreasonable, unless his
mistake seemed so obvious that I thought it was committed on purpose,
that is, was not an intellectual mistake at all. When I call him
unreasonable, perhaps I really suspect he is making a claim on my time
to meet some private convenience of his own—to avoid a crowd or to make
sure of some particular carriage, which I do not care about—and therefore
perhaps it may after all be his _purpose_ that I think unreasonable.
But there is one great doctrine of reasonableness which does reduce it to
a question of means and ends, and that is, the doctrine that everything
else is a means to pleasure, whether that of the agent or that of all
sentient beings. I do not want to discuss Hedonism psychologically
just now, I only want to use it as an illustration of one way in which
intelligence may be alleged to control action. The ultimate theory would
then be that this uniform purpose, pleasure, is a natural or obvious, or,
so to speak, a _given_ purpose, and that all definite action is or has
been prescribed by the intelligence dealing with matter of fact, as a
means to the realisation of this given purpose.
Then reasonable action would mean what our reasoning and perceptive
powers, dealing with matters of fact, pronounce to make for pleasure,
and unreasonable action would be all that does not. Here, though I
wish to avoid hackneyed criticism, I must note that there is a certain
difficulty in getting across from the idea of one’s own pleasure to that
of other people’s pleasure as a natural purpose, and sometimes we find
the contention that any person’s pleasure is a _reasonable purpose_ to
any person, which, like several indications before, takes us out of the
connection between reason and the mere calculation of means to an end.
Apart from this, I have, for our object, only to refer back to the
suspicion with which we regarded these distinctions between means, ends,
and consequences, in the presented idea of an action. The burden of
proof lies on those who limit the aspects in and for which activities or
results can be or ought to be desired. If we say that the whole complex
of our moral life is a means to a partial though necessary incident in
it, it seems to me that we are putting the cart before the horse. If you
could really say “moral life is the means, and pleasure is the end” then
it would follow that, should calculation tell you that moral life was not
the most effectual means, you would not prefer it. Now this old argument
may be pronounced unfair on the ground that it puts an impossible case;
just like the counter-question which is asked by the opposite side, “If
morality led only to increased pain, would you prefer it then?” Still,
if these two questions together bring out the fact that pleasure is an
incident of a whole complex of functions and activities which we cannot
suppose to be separated from it, we do get this much result, that there
is no firm ground for distinguishing part of the complex as the end from
the rest as the means. And it seems clear, also, that we differentiate
pleasures _in kind_ according to the activities which they accompany,
just as we have constantly found that the so-called means differentiates
and qualifies the so-called purpose.
Thus I do not think that it is possible to represent the reasonableness
of action as consisting in its guidance by right calculation of the means
to an end, not even to the alleged simple and universal end of pleasure.
At the same time, this view has one essential element of truth, that is
the recognition that a positive impulse or claim can only be combated or
defeated by a positive impulse or claim. The view goes so far indeed as
to say that one form of a general impulse can only be combated by another
form of that same impulse through the discrepancy of the alternative
means to its attainment. However this may be, so much does seem clear,
viz. that reasonableness cannot be, as popular language tends to make
it, something purely negative and prohibitive. Its negative aspect must
be secondary, and according to the suggestions furnished by the notions
we have been examining, must arise out of a discrepancy between two
sets of means to the same acknowledged or accepted end. This I think is
solid ground, so far that we are bound to deduce the negative side of
reasonableness from a positive nature, whether a general relation to one
and the same purpose, or relations to different purposes. We have learnt,
on the other hand, to distrust the absolute distinction between means and
end.
2. Now I turn for a moment to what I may describe as _maxims_ of
reasonableness. I will not call them “A priori principles,” because such
an expression raises a question about the nature of experience which does
not concern the point before us. But I do treat them as characteristic of
a view which explains reasonableness rather by rules than by purposes;
and it seems to follow from this that the rule must be alleged to be
self-evident, because if they were derivative, they would most naturally
be derivative from purposes. But in the history of speculation of course
the same principle may be recommended at one time as analogous to an
axiom of the reasoning power, and at another time as involved in the
purposes which are recognised as good. Even the same writer may combine
both views.
Now if such principles are supported as constituting the reasonableness
of action, either because connected with the predominance of the
speculative intelligence, or because of an analogy between such
principles and any axioms acceptable to the speculative intelligence, I
believe that this support of them is due to a sheer confusion.