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REASON IN COMMON SENSE
Volume One of "The Life of Reason"
GEORGE SANTAYANA
hê gar noy enhergeia zôhêDOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.NEW YORKThis Dover edition, first published in 1980, is an unabridged republication ofvolume one of
The Life of Reason; or the Phases of Human Progress
, originallypublished by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1905.
CONTENTSCONTENTS
CHAPTER ITHE BIRTH OF REASON
Existence always has an Order, called Chaos when incompatible with a chosengood.—Absolute order, or truth, is static, impotent, indifferent.—In experienceorder is relative to interests which determine the moral status of all powers.—The discovered conditions of reason not its beginning.—The flux first.—Life thefixation of interests.—Primary dualities.—First gropings.—Instinct the nucleus ofreason.—Better and worse the fundamental categories.
CHAPTER IIFIRST STEPS AND FIRST FLUCTUATIONS
Dreams before thoughts.—The mind vegetates uncontrolled save by physicalforces.—Internal order supervenes.—Intrinsic pleasure in existence.—Pleasure agood, but not pursued or remembered unless it suffuses an object.—Subhumandelights.—Animal living.—Causes at last discerned.—Attention guided bybodily impulse.
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CHAPTER IIITHE 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 beknown?—Can the immediate be meant?—Is thought a bridge from sensation tosensation?—
 Mens naturaliter 
 
 platonica
.—Identity and independence predicated ofthings.
CHAPTER IVON SOME CRITICS OF THIS DISCOVERY
Psychology as a solvent.—Misconceived rôle of intelligence.—All criticismdogmatic.—A choice of hypotheses.—Critics disguised enthusiasts.—Hume'sgratuitous scepticism.—Kant's substitute for knowledge.—False subjectivityattributed to reason.—Chimerical reconstruction.—The Critique a work onmental architecture.—Incoherences.—Nature the true system of conditions.—Artificial pathos in subjectivism.—Berkeley's algebra of perception.—Horror ofphysics.—Puerility in morals.—Truism and sophism.—Reality is the practicalmade intelligible.—Vain "realities" and trustworthy "fictions" .
CHAPTER VNATURE UNIFIED AND MIND DISCERNED
Man's feeble grasp of nature.—Its unity ideal and discoverable only by steadythought.—Mind the erratic residue of existence.—Ghostly character of mind.—Hypostasis and criticism both need control.—Comparative constancy in objectsand in ideas.—Spirit and sense defined by their relation to nature.—Vaguenotions of nature involve vague notions of spirit.—Sense and spirit the life ofnature, which science redistributes but does not deny Pages.
CHAPTER VIDISCOVERY OF FELLOW-MINDS
Another background for current experience may be found in alien minds.—Twousual accounts of this conception criticised: analogy between bodies, anddramatic dialogue in the soul.—Subject and object empirical, not transcendental,terms.—Objects originally soaked in secondary and tertiary qualities.—Tertiaryqualities transposed.—Imputed mind consists of the tertiary qualities ofperceived body—"Pathetic fallacy" normal, yet ordinarily fallacious.—Casewhere it is not a fallacy.—Knowledge succeeds only by accident.—Limits of
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insight.—Perception of character.—Conduct divined, consciousness ignored.—Consciousness untrustworthy.—Metaphorical mind.—Summary.
CHAPTER VIICONCRETIONS IN DISCOURSE AND IN EXISTENCE
So-called abstract qualities primary.—General qualities prior to particular things.—Universals are concretions in discourse.—Similar reactions, merged in onehabit of reproduction, yield an idea.—Ideas are ideal.—So-called abstractionscomplete facts.—Things concretions of concretions.—Ideas prior in the order ofknowledge, things in the order of nature.—Aristotle's compromise.—Empiricalbias in favour of contiguity.—Artificial divorce of logic from practice.—Theirmutual involution.—Rationalistic suicide.—Complementary character of essenceand existence.
CHAPTER VIIION THE RELATIVE VALUE OF THINGS AND IDEAS
Moral tone of opinions derived from their logical principle.—Concretions indiscourse express instinctive reactions.—Idealism rudimentary.—Naturalismsad.—The soul akin to the eternal and ideal.—Her inexperience.—Platonismspontaneous.—Its essential fidelity to the ideal.—Equal rights of empiricism.—Logic dependent on fact for its importance, and for its subsistence.—Reason anddocility.—Applicable thought and clarified experience.
CHAPTER IXHOW THOUGHT IS PRACTICAL
Functional relations of mind and body.—They form one natural life.—Artificesinvolved in separating them.—Consciousness expresses vital equilibrium anddocility.—Its worthlessness as a cause and value as an expression.—Thought'smarch automatic and thereby implicated in events.—Contemplative essence ofaction.—Mechanical efficacy alien to thought's essence.—Consciousnesstranscendental and transcendent.—It is the seat of value.—Apparent utility ofpain.—Its real impotence.—Preformations involved.—Its untoward significance.—Perfect function not unconscious.—Inchoate ethics.—Thought the entelechy ofbeing.—Its exuberance.
CHAPTER X
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