The Life of Reason

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
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
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