The Religion of Nature Delineated by William Wollaston (mystery books to read .txt) 📕

inclinations, his bodily passions, and the motions of all his members490 to reason, and try everything by it. For in the climax set down, he cannot but observe that as the principle of vegetation is something above the inertia of mere matter, and sense something above that again, so reason must be something above all these;491 or, that his uppermost faculty is reason.492 And from hence it follows, that he is one of those beings mentioned in section III, proposition XI and that the great law imposed upon him is to be governed by reason.

Any man may prove this to himself by experiment, if he pleases. Because he cannot (at least without great violence to his nature) do anything if he has a greater reason against the doing of it than for it. When men do err against reason, it is either because they do not (perhaps will not) advert, and use their reason, or not enough; or because their faculties are defective.

And further, by section III, proposition X, to endeavor to act according to right reason, and to endeavor to act according to truth, are in effect the same thing. We cannot do the one, but we must do the other. We cannot act according to truth, or so as not to deny any truth⁠—and that is, we cannot act right⁠—unless we endeavor to act according to right reason, and are led by it.

Therefore, not to subject one’s sensitive inclinations and passions to reason is to deny either that he is rational, or that reason is the supreme and ruling faculty in his nature: and that is to desert mankind,493 and to deny himself to be what he knows himself, by experience and in his own conscience upon examination, to be, and what he would be very angry if anybody should say he was not.

If a beast could be supposed to give up his sense and activity, neglect the calls of hunger and those appetites by which he (according to his nature) is to be guided, and, refusing to use the powers with which he is endowed in order to get his food and preserve his life, lie still in some place, and expect to grow and be fed like a plant, this would be much the same case, only not so bad, as when a man cancels his reason, and, as it were, strives to metamorphize himself into a brute. And yet, this he does, who pursues only sensual objects, and leaves himself to the impulses of appetite and passion. For as in that case, the brute neglects the law of his nature and affects that of the order below him, so does the man disobey the law of his nature and put himself under that of the lower animals, to whom he thus makes a defection.494

If this be so, how wretchedly do they violate the order of nature and transgress against truth, who not only reject the conduct of reason to follow sense and passion, but even make it subservient to them;495 who use it only in finding out means to effect their wicked ends,496 but never apply it to the consideration of those ends, or the nature of those means: whether they are just or unjust, right or wrong? This is not only to deviate from the path of nature, but to invert it, and to become something more than brutish⁠—brutes with reason⁠—which must be the most enormous and worst of all brutes. When the brute is governed by sense and bodily appetites, he observes his proper rule; when a man is governed after that manner, in defiance of reason, he violates his; but when he makes his rational powers to serve the brutish part⁠—to assist and promote it⁠—he heightens and increases the brutality, enlarges its field, makes it to act with greater force and effect,497 and becomes a monster.

His duty then, who is conscious to himself of the truth of those things recounted under the foregoing proposition, is to examine everything carefully, and to see that he complies with no corporeal inclination at the expense of his reason, but that all his affections, concupiscible and irascible, be directed towards such objects, and in such measure, time, and place, as that allows. Every word498 and action, every motion and step in life, should be conducted by reason.499 This is the foundation, and indeed the sum, of all virtue.

He must take care not to bring upon himself500 want, diseases, trouble; but, on the contrary, endeavor to prevent them, and to provide for his own comfortable subsistence, as far as he can without contradicting any truth501 (that is, without denying matters of fact, and such propositions as have been already, or will in the sequel, here be shown to be true concerning God, property, the superiority of reason, etc.). To explain this limitation: if a man should consider himself as obnoxious to hunger, weather, injuries, diseases, and the rest; then, to supply his wants, take what is his neighbor’s property; and at last, in vindication of himself, say, “I act according to what I am, a being obnoxious to hunger, etc., and to act otherwise would be incompliance with truth;” this would not be sufficient to justify him. The grand rule requires that what he does should interfere with no truth, but what he does interferes with several. For by taking that which (by the supposition) is his neighbor’s, he acts as if it was not his neighbor’s but his own, and therefore plainly contradicts fact, and those truths in sections VI and VII respecting property: when by not taking what is his neighbor’s, he would contradict no truth, he would not deny himself to be obnoxious to hunger, etc. There