Irrationality

“ The irrationalism, as he himself points out, was completely opposed to all early influences on him, but it lay in his own personal circumstances. The contrast between his temperamental impulse to energetic practical action in every direction, and the reserve, passivity, and isolation which myopia enforced, seemed to him absolutely irrational and sharpened his vision for all the irrationality of existence. ”

“ The higher the type a man represents, the greater is the improbability that he will SUCCEED; the accidental, the law of irrationality in the general constitution of mankind, manifests itself most terribly in its destructive effect on the higher orders of men, the conditions of whose lives are delicate, diverse, and difficult to determine. ”

“ Shall we then say that the feeling of rationality is constituted merely by the absence of any feeling of irrationality? I think there are very good grounds for upholding such a view. All feeling whatever, in the light of certain recent psychological speculations, seems to depend for its physical condition not on simple discharge of nerve-currents, but on their discharge under arrest, impediment, or resistance. ”

“ If rationality be in it at all, it must be in it throughout; if irrationality be in it anywhere, that also must pervade it throughout. It must be wholly rational or wholly irrational, pure universe or pure multiverse or nulliverse; and reduced to this violent alternative, no one's choice ought long to remain doubtful. The individual absolute, with its parts co-implicated through and through, so that there is nothing in any part by which any other part can remain inwardly unaffected, is the only rational supposition. ”

“ And behold! morality should be defined as that which is practically irrational, foolish, stupid, the product of illusion and confusion, or the contrary of the practical activity, which is clear-sightedness, rationality, wisdom. Thus defined, it is at the same time annulled. Indeed, irrationality is that which is condemned to be perpetually subjected to the rational ”

“ Nevertheless I am searching for some wider expression that will rationalize all of us—conceiving that what we call irrationality is our view of parts and functions out of relation to an underlying whole; an underlying something that is working out its development in terms of planets and acids and bugs, rivers and labor unions and cyclones, politicians and islands and astronomers. ”

“ The irrationality of the great process is shown by its so-called accidentalness, which perforce we ought to deny, since, obviously, we cannot think of a process not being causally and necessarily conditioned. But actually, accidentality exists everywhere, and does so indeed so obtrusively that we might as well pocket our causal philosophy! The rich store of life both is, and is not, determined by law ”

“ I suppose you are always interfering with your own feelings, and those of other people, and dogmatizing about the irrationality of this, that, and the other sentiment, and then ordering it to be suppressed because you imagine it to be inconsistent with logic. ”

“ It would be a pity if the word 'rationality' were allowed to give us trouble here. It is one of those eulogistic words that both sides claim—for almost no one is willing to advertise his philosophy as a system of irrationality. But like most of the words which people used eulogistically, the word 'rational' carries too many meanings. The most objective one is that of the older logic—the connexion between two things is rational when you can infer one from the other, mortal from Socrates, e.g. ”

“ Since the heart can thus wall out the ultimate irrationality which the head ascertains, the erection of its procedure into a systematized method would be a philosophic achievement of first-rate importance. ”

“ An apparently irrational theory should not be rejected as irrational as long as it is within the bounds of possibility that the apparent irrationality is due to the limitations of our reason, or the absence of data, that have not come under our experience and knowledge of Cosmic laws. Everything may be contrary to what we think it to be ”

“ For just as the earliest scientific psychology cheerfully recognized the two sides of the human mind the—rational and the irrational—as equally necessary, equally human, so in an altered sense we may say that the religion of humanity, as it springs from the human heart, must not only take cognizance of its justifiable aspirations, but of those hopes and fears also which in a strict sense of the word we might be tempted to call irrational, as in no sense founded on reason, if not in direct antagonism with it. ”

“ This tendency had previously been inordinately strengthened by the rationalism of modern life, which by depreciating everything irrational, caused the function of irrationalism to sink into the unconscious. ”

“ But the function once in the unconscious will from thence work unceasing havoc, like an incurable disease whose centre cannot be eradicated. For then the individual and the nation alike are compelled to live irrationally, and even to apply their highest idealism and their best wit to make this madness of irrationalism as complete as possible. We see examples of this on a small scale in our patient. ”

“ The irrational or illogical mind, on the contrary, is unable to discriminate between belief and knowledge, between facts and fancies. Consequently, this type of mind proceeds from guess to conclusion, with the result that final judgment is necessarily distorted, warped, and swerved from truth just in proportion as the basic guess is incorrect or false. ”

“ Now, in men rational principle and mind are the end towards which nature strives, so that the birth and moral discipline of the citizens ought to be ordered with a view to them. In the second place, as the soul and body are two, we see also that there are two parts of the soul, the rational and the irrational, and two corresponding states- reason and appetite. And as the body is prior in order of generation to the soul, so the irrational is prior to the rational. ”

“ The improbability I talk of, is that of an irregular fact, contrary to the order and course of nature, and therefore unaccountable. A chain of imagined facts linked together according to the order of nature, find easy entrance into the mind; and if described with warmth of fancy, they produce complete images, including ideal presence. But it is with great difficulty that we admit any irregular fact; for an irregular fact always puzzles the judgement. Doubtful of its reality we immediately enter upon reflection, and discovering the cheat, lose all relish and concern. ”

“ But every pursuit obviously must involve some kind of governing principle. Even the extreme of theoretical scepticism is based on some accepted idea about truth and fact. It is because you are sure as to some main feature of truth or reality, that you are compelled to doubt or to reject special truths which are offered you. But, if so, you stand on an absolute principle, and, with regard to this, you claim, tacitly or openly, to be infallible. And to start from our general fallibility, and to argue from this to the uncertainty of every possible result, is in the end irrational. ”

“ You cannot put reason into an inferior category, when compared with will or instinct or emotion, without using reason itself to prove such an inferiority.
We may come to the conclusion that the universe is rather irrational than rational. We may come to the conclusion that the secret of life transcends and over-brims all rationality. ”

“ For that might be taken as a statement that the contradiction already is present in the mere predicate, before judgment is attempted; and this, if defensible, would be misleading. Error is the qualification of a reality in such a way that in the result it has an inconsistent content, which for that reason is rejected. Where existence has a “what” colliding within itself, there the predication of this “what” is an erroneous judgment. If a reality is self-consistent, and its further determination has introduced discord, there the addition is the mistake, and the reality is unaffected. ”

“ Now if we were always obliged consciously to argue and deliberately to infer, whenever the sensations hand over a report to the Imagination, we should be at a great disadvantage as compared with our instinct-possessing compeers, whom we call irrational. ”

“ But if this experimental reasoning is of that nature which philosophy describes it as being of, i.e. if it is not itself a process of reason, how can there from an irrational process of the mind arise a proposition at all,—to make which is the function of the rational faculty alone? There cannot; and it is evident that the miraculous does not stand in any opposition whatever to reason.... ”

“ If the irrational is absolutely unreal now, it can never become less real in the future. Thus our ascription of complete rationality to the universe leads us to a belief that one factor in experience, as it presents itself to us, is fundamentally and permanently irrational — a somewhat singular conclusion from such a premise.
To put the difficulty from a more practical point of view, either the imperfection in experience leaves a stain on perfection, or it does not. ”

“ Thus, the maxim that ‘mankind act from calculation’ may be, in a general sense, true: but the moment you apply this maxim to subject all their actions systematically and demonstrably to reason, and to exclude passion both in common and in extreme cases, you give it a sense in which the principle is false, and in which all the inferences built upon it (many and mighty, no doubt) fall to the ground. ‘Madmen reason.’ But in what proportion does this hold good? How far does reason guide them, or their madness err? ”

“ If it alleges that man has any natural preference for a reasonable inference or that the rationality of an inference is a measure of its hold upon him, it is grotesquely wrong. To propagate this error is to encourage man in his most baleful illusion, and to postpone the day of an effective and widespread adoption of a perfected art of knowing. ”

“ The logical illusion, from which springs all error, strife, and confusion, and which we are too apt to transfer to the divine mind, is so far innate in the very form of man’s finite intellect, than even when we have recognized it for what it really is; yet, so long as we confine ourselves to mere logical reasoning, and are seduced by its seeming rigor of consequence, we are ever ready to fall anew into this dangerous error without even remarking it. ”

“ Again, it may be impossible that there should be men such as Zeuxis painted. 'Yes,' we say, 'but the impossible is the higher thing; for the ideal type must surpass the reality.' To justify the irrational, we appeal to what is commonly said to be. In addition to which, we urge that the irrational sometimes does not violate reason; just as 'it is probable that a thing may happen contrary to probability.'
Things that sound contradictory should be examined by the same rules as in dialectical refutation whether the same thing is meant, in the same relation, and in the same sense. ”

“ Similarly also, when dealing with mere images or notions in the mind, we calculate as if we had the facts before our eyes, and deliberate upon the future in relation to the present And, further, when the reason in the speculative sphere asserts something to be pleasant or painful, within the practical sphere it pursues it or avoids it, and, in a word, steps forth into action. Independently, however, of action, truth and falsehood are of the same character as good and evil: but they differ in so far as the two former are absolute, the two latter relative to some person or object. ”

“ No seeker of truth can fail to rejoice at the terre-à-terre sort of discussion of the issues between Empiricism and Transcendentalism (or, as the champions of the latter would probably prefer to say, between Irrationalism and Rationalism) that seems to have begun in Mind. [141] It would seem as if, over concrete examples like Mr. J. S. Haldane’s, both parties ought inevitably to come to a better understanding. As a reader with a strong bias towards Irrationalism, I have studied his article [142] with the liveliest admiration of its temper and its painstaking effort to be clear. ”

“ They, too, are known to all today. There have always been men to defend the rights of the irrational. The tradition of what may be called humiliated thought has never ceased to exist. The criticism of rationalism has been made so often that it seems unnecessary to begin again. Yet our epoch is marked by the rebirth of those paradoxical systems that strive to trip up the reason as if truly it had always forged ahead. ”

“ Under these conditions forcing reason back upon experience causes it to disappear, for it is equivalent to reducing the universality and necessity which characterize it to pure appearance, to an illusion which may be useful practically, but which corresponds to nothing in reality; consequently it is denying all objective reality to the logical life, whose regulation and organization is the function of the categories. Classical empiricism results in irrationalism ”

“ Likewise in all, or nearly all, the world's memorable contests between science and delusions, the truth has prevailed, not by virtue of logic, but in spite of it; the instincts of mankind—the one saving clause in the constitution of the human brain—rising up in their unconscious majesty, and vindicating their rights and their power against the tyranny of the senses and the cruelty of the syllogism. ”

“ Of these terms, irrational is the weakest, denoting that which is plainly inconsistent with the dictates of sound reason; as, an irrational course of life. Foolish rises higher, and implies either a perversion of that faculty, or an absolute weakness or fatuity of mind ”