The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 64, February, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 64, February, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
Merely to act according to some teleological or determining principle
gives man no preëminence above Nature, except in degree. That which is
peculiar to man is that he has the faculty of acting according to laws
_as represented and reflected upon in the light of thought_,--to which
reason is absolutely indispensable. Reason is therefore necessary to
choice,--to freedom. There can, therefore, no more be goodness without
reason than there can be without will. Yet there might be, as Kant
justly argues, if good were to be in any case identified with mere
happiness. "For," says he, "all the actions which man has to perform
with a view to happiness, and the whole rule of his conduct, would be
much more exactly presented to him by instinct, and that end had been
much more certainly attained than it ever can be by reason; and should
the latter also be bestowed on the favored creature, it must be of use
only in contemplating the happy predisposition lodged in instinct,
to admire this, to rejoice in it, and be grateful for it to the
beneficent Cause; in short, Nature would have prevented reason from
any practical use in subduing appetite, etc., and from excogitating
for itself a project of happiness; she would have taken upon herself
not only the choice of ends, but the means, and had with wise care
intrusted both to instinct merely." The fact, then, that reason has
been given, and has been endowed with a practical use, is sufficient
to prove that some more worthy end than felicity is designed,--namely,
a will good in itself,--rationally good,--that is, _from choice_.
Out of the _rationality_ of will is developed its _morality_. Here,
only, is found the possibility of failure in respect of the end
constitutionally indicated,--here only the avenues of temptation, by
which alien elements come in to array the man against himself in
a terrible conflict, so sublime that it is a spectacle to heavenly
powers. It is only as this rationality is clearly developed, and is
allotted its just place in Moral Science, that the universal structure
to which we have already alluded, and which, as we saw, culminated
in the will, assumes its peculiar sublimity. For the _voluntariness_
which is consciously realized in reason gives man the mastery over
constitutional processes, not merely to direct, but even to thwart
them; nor this merely for himself, but it is in his power, through
the nullification of his own constitution, to nullify also that of the
world, to dally with the institutions of Nature, and on the grandest
scale to play the meddler.
Merely of itself, apart from reason, the will could only work out its
teleological type in darkness and by blind necessity; there could be
no goodness, for this involves conscious elements. But through reason,
that which of itself the will would yield as unconscious impulse
obtains _representation_, and thus becomes a recognized principle,
which in connection with the feelings involves an element of
obligation.
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