Qualities: REASON

Theirs not to make reply, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die.
––Tennyson, The Charge of the Light Brigade, 1854

We are born sensitive and from our birth onwards we are affected in various ways by our environment. As soon as we become conscious of our sensations we tend to seek or shun the things that cause them, at first because they are pleasant or unpleasant, then because they suit us or not, and at last because of judgments formed by means of the ideas of happiness and goodness which reason gives us.
––Rousseau, Emile, 1762

Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul….For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction. Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, that it may sing; And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may lie through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.
––Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923

Francis Bacon was the most powerful and influential intellect of his time. Shakespeare, of course, stood above him in imagination and literary art; but Bacon’s mind ranged over the universe like a searchlight peering and prying curiously into every corner and secret of space. All the excitement and pride of a Columbus sailing madly into a new world. …
He distrusted all cogitations unchecked by actual experience, and all conclusions tainted with desire. … Bacon preferred “that reason which is elicited from facts. … From a closer and purer league between these two faculties, the experimental and the rational.” He repudiated the reliance upon traditions and authorities, he required rational and natural explanations instead of emotional presumptions, supernatural interventions, and popular mythology.
––Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Reason Begins, 1961

Imagine that the ancient Greeks understood reason, but that Francis Bacon in the seventeenth century had to fight an entrenched civilization that believed otherwise. We must still confront those who come from a different world and seek to destroy the foundation of ours.
––John Roberts


For some, good judgment, based on reason, seems to come naturally. For others, good decisions are made with great difficulty. We are born with intelligence; childhood experiences and education improve our knowledge, thinking and logic; as we grow to maturity, we form a process of good reasoning. This illuminates the way more clearly, and enables us to cope with the complexities of what we encounter.

To reason, to deduce and induce with facts and sensible assumptions, to reach conclusions and build a related framework of knowledge, to clearly understand our personal world, is the simple duty and essential nutrition of success of every intelligent being. Throughout, we must fight off the emotions, prejudices, wishful thinking and misinformation that flood our brain, muddle our thinking and blind us to the reality of the world. Our greatest enemy is the failure to control and destroy those tormented, disconnected pieces of our own unprepared and illogical mind.

We ought to have good reasons for what we think, say and do, and what we cause. This helps to built integrity, the consistency of thought, word and deed. We are born with the ability to reason; babies and cats learn about hot stoves. But, it becomes more difficult when we must look forward and perceive the consequences of our reasoning and decisions, and see through the fog of deception that clouds the approaching future.