s us with surprise. Now our surprise is not excited by
the good and affectionate disposition which some of them exhibit--we
recognise that as something other than reason--but by some action in
them which seems to be determined not by the impression of the moment,
but by a resolution previously made and kept. Elephants, for instance,
are reported to have taken premeditated revenge for insults long after
they were suffered; lions, to have requited benefits on an opportunity
tardily offered. The truth of such stories has, however, no bearing at
all on the question, What do we mean by reason? But they enable us to
decide whether in the lower animals there is any trace of anything
that we can call reason.

Kant not only declares that all our moral sentiments originate in
reason, but he lays down that reason, _in my sense of the word_, is
a condition of moral action; as he holds that for an action to be
virtuous and meritorious it must be done in accordance with maxims,
and not spring from a resolve taken under some momentary impression.
But in both contentions he is wrong. If I resolve to take vengeance on
some one, and when an opportunity offers, the better consciousness in
the form of love and humanity speaks its word, and I am influenced by
it rather than by my evil resolution, this is a virtuous act, for it
is a manifestation of the better consciousness. It is possible to
conceive of a very virtuous man in whom the better consciousness is
so continuously active that it is never silent, and never allows his
passions to get a complete hold of him. By such consciousness he is
subject to a direct control, instead of being guided indirectly,
through the medium of reason, by means of maxims and moral principles.
That is why a man may have weak reasoning powers and a weak
understanding and yet have a high sense of morality and be eminently
good; for the most important element in a man depends as little on
intellectual as it does on physical strength. Jesus says, _Blessed
are the poor in spirit_. And Jacob Boehme has the excellent and noble
observation: _Whoso lies quietly in his own will, like a child in the
womb, and lets himself be led and guided by that inner principle from
which he is sprung, is the noblest and richest on earth_.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Epistles_, 37.]

ETHICAL REFLECTIONS.

The philosophers of the ancient world united in a single conception
a great many things that had no connection with one another.