THE LIFE OF REASON The Phases of Human Progress Volumes One Through Five GEORGE SANTAYANA hê gar noy enhergeia zôhê In Five Volumes Introduction to Life of Reason Volume One Volume Two Volume Three Volume Four Volume Five REASON IN COMMON SENSE Volume One of “The Life of Reason” GEORGE SANTAYANA hê gar noy enhergeia zôhê CONTENTS INTRODUCTION THE SUBJECT OF THIS WORK, ITS METHOD AND ANTECEDENTS 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. Pages 1-32 REASON IN COMMON SENSE CHAPTER I THE BIRTH OF REASON 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. Pages 35-47 CHAPTER II FIRST STEPS AND FIRST FLUCTUATIONS 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. Pages 48-63 CHAPTER III THE DISCOVERY OF NATURAL OBJECTS 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. Pages 64-83 CHAPTER IV ON SOME CRITICS OF THIS DISCOVERY