ightened vitality might flow,
the improvement could be neither remembered nor measured nor desired.
The Life of Reason is accordingly neither a mere means nor a mere
incident in human progress; it is the total and embodied progress
itself, in which the pleasures of sense are included in so far as they
can be intelligently enjoyed and pursued. To recount man's rational
moments would be to take an inventory of all his goods; for he is not
himself (as we say with unconscious accuracy) in the others. If he ever
appropriates them in recollection or prophecy, it is only on the ground
of some physical relation which they may have to his being.

Reason is as old as man and as prevalent as human nature; for we should
not recognise an animal to be human unless his instincts were to some
degree conscious of their ends and rendered his ideas in that measure
relevant to conduct. Many sensations, or even a whole world of dreams,
do not amount to intelligence until the images in the mind begin to
represent in some way, however symbolic, the forces and realities
confronted in action. There may well be intense consciousness in the
total absence of rationality. Such consciousness is suggested in dreams,
in madness, and may be found, for all we know, in the depths of
universal nature. Minds peopled only by desultory visions and lusts
would not have the dignity of human souls even if they seemed to pursue
certain objects unerringly; for that pursuit would not be illumined by
any vision of its goal. Reason and humanity begin with the union of
instinct and ideation, when instinct becomes enlightened, establishes
values in its objects, and is turned from a process into an art, while
at the same time consciousness becomes practical and cognitive,
beginning to contain some symbol or record of the co-ordinate realities
among which it arises.

Reason accordingly requires the fusion of two types of life, commonly
led in the world in well-nigh total separation, one a life of impulse
expressed in affairs and social passions, the other a life of reflection
expressed in religion, science, and the imitative arts. In the Life of
Reason, if it were brought to perfection, intelligence would be at once
the universal method of practice and its continual reward. All
reflection would then be applicable in action and all action fruitful in
happiness. Though this be an ideal, yet everyone gives it from time to
time a partial embodiment when he practises useful