Reason

Use in the book

The image of logic as a well crank without a rope makes reason what gives formal procedure purchase and usefulness. Similarly, the courtly picture of passion serving tranquil intelligence reserves thinking and judging for reason while allowing temper a place in speech. These statements do not simply prohibit emotion; they distribute different activities among different powers.

Another formulation defines reason through a balance between reason, appetite and will. Its repetition of reason on both sides remains unresolved, and should not be silently repaired into a different faculty. The bee/butterfly image gives reason productive usefulness while demanding charm of esprit. Finally a dramatic reason can be good because it belongs to its speaker’s character, without being conclusive. The latter is a reason in a different sense from the governing faculty.

Places to read

1. II, p. 652, entry 9, ¶1Logic needs reason as a well crank needs its rope.
2. I, p. 117, entry 10, ¶1Speech may use temper, but thought and judgment require reason.
3. II, p. 707, entry 7, ¶1Reason is repeatedly named in the balance that constitutes freedom.
4. II, p. 857, entry 6, ¶1Reason’s bee-like usefulness differs from the mind’s butterfly-like charm.
5. II, p. 604, entry 4, ¶1A dramatic reason belongs to a character without being conclusive.

Translation in this edition

The English translation keeps reason distinct from reasoning and does not remove the apparent circularity on II.707. “Dramatic” concerns the character of the speaker, not merely exaggerated delivery.

Use in the book

Traherne’s celebration of childhood intuition does not establish a hostility to reason. III.2 expressly says that what was first known intuitively was later collected again through the highest reason. The recovered knowledge is not worthless because it arrives by a slower path. Reason supplies an adult way of understanding and maintaining the goods first disclosed without deliberate argument.

The inquiry is directed toward happiness but must be adequate to the things investigated. III.44 extends natural philosophy into the study of natures, their causes, qualities, relations, and ends as far as nature and reason can know them. Even its narrower study of bodies has value because it prepares the enjoyer’s eyes. Rational discrimination reveals why things are good together, rather than merely substituting abstract terms for experience.

IV.8 insists that reason govern practice. The philosopher orders desire, rules passion, and refuses unexamined obedience to custom. This government does not require suppressing every pleasure. The superior end must be seen in its attractiveness and then lived toward through discouragement and difficulty. The reasons supplied by Christian revelation, God’s existence, heaven, and Christ’s redeeming love, join the perceived excellence of virtue and felicity as motives.

Reason also criticizes the postponement of happiness. IV.9 asks what justification could make it desirable only at the end of life when God offers communion now. The challenge turns an apparently pious delay into a question about what the professed desire actually means. Discernment has force because it exposes inconsistencies in conduct as well as defects in propositions.

Finally, IV.81 makes an ambitious claim for right reason in the exploration of heavenly mysteries and the soul’s powers. This confidence should not be turned into a settled theory of reason independent of every other source. The Centuries reason through Scripture, memory, observation, received philosophy, prayer, and the experienced attraction of good. Their distinctive rationality lies in bringing these materials into mutually illuminating relations and testing what follows for a human life. Reason is one of the means by which bestowed capacity becomes active enjoyment, and enjoyment becomes intelligent rather than accidental.

Places to read

1. III.2The highest reason recovers truths once immediately known in childhood.
2. III.44Reason investigates natures and relations, preparing the eyes for enjoyment.
3. IV.8Living by reason means governing passions and conduct toward an understood end.
4. IV.9Rational scrutiny challenges the supposed justification for postponing felicity.
5. IV.81Right reason is credited with discerning heavenly mysteries and the soul’s astonishing capacity.

In this edition

Distinguish the faculty from particular reasons offered in an argument. The highest reason is compatible with the book’s use of revelation and remembered intuition, rather than a term for their automatic exclusion.

Use in the book

“Good and simple reason” is an imagined place of rest in June 1834: reaching it would mean packing away wandering hopes and joining ordinary human life. The phrase is not merely a sneer at unimaginative conformity. It expresses a real desire to stop being exhausted by possibilities that never become settled action.

Reason also supports independence. The August account of intellectual growth envisages a resistance to social pressure that is solid and reasoned, even while the speaker remains personally timid. Rational conviction can therefore coexist with emotional vulnerability. In September, reason and faith become two words whose eventual union would solve the world's enigma. Guérin announces no achieved synthesis; the splendid natural order still troubles the human spirit that cannot understand it.

The later accounts sharpen the practical cost of imaginative mobility. Reason suffers while the mind carries too much sail, and training in logic requires a connectedness that the speaker feels unable to maintain. Nevertheless, calm sequence remains a standard of intellectual strength. The lexicon should preserve this esteem rather than treating Guérin as simply an opponent of reason. His recurrent difficulty lies in bringing valued powers into a sustainable relation, not in establishing one faculty's right to abolish the others.

Places to read

1. 25 June 1834 · ¶1Simple reason promises release from endlessly renewed imaginative projects.
2. 4 August 1834 · ¶2A reasoned independence is forming within a temperament still easily frightened.
3. 19 September 1834 · ¶1The unity of reason and faith is projected as a future solution, not asserted as a present possession.
4. 10 December 1834 · ¶4Practical reason suffers beneath the excess sail of imaginative wandering.
5. 27 March 1835 · ¶1Austere logic, method, and deduction remain desirable but difficult disciplines.

Translation in this edition

“Raisonnée” is rendered “reasoned,” while “raison pratique” becomes “practical reason.” The latter should not by itself be taken as a citation of a particular philosophical system; the immediate scene concerns the management of a life.

Use in the book

Governing power and competing counsel

Imagination should be subject to reason in human beings. Burton’s “or at least should be” distinguishes rightful government from what regularly happens. In other animals, imagination is here their highest directive power and is called ratio brutorum, their reason. The earlier survey has already reported a competing doctrine that animals possess reason like humans, but to a smaller degree because of their organs. That opinion belongs to the survey of alternatives; it should not be silently merged with the later account giving imagination no superior in animals.

The moving-faculty account then separates the object desired or avoided, which is the end, from the efficient source of movement. In humans this is reason or imagination subordinate to it; in animals it is imagination alone. Appetite, the moving faculty, spirit and bodily organ form the ensuing chain. Reason is not the tendon that moves the limb, nor is it simply the object pursued.

The account of will says reason carries rational appetite towards an object already apprehended and judged. Yet the will’s freedom is qualified, especially in spiritual matters, and appetite repeatedly rebels. Wild horses carrying off a chariot supply the image of passion overpowering government. Burton then quotes Medea’s divided counsel and glosses it: lust advises one thing, reason another. Knowledge of the good and performance of it can come apart.

The later division of passions develops this moral conflict through judgment. The stubborn will is said to pervert the power that sees what ought to be done. Unrestrained passions become the sufferer’s own destructive hounds, like Actaeon’s. Burton assigns responsibility to the encouragement of desires in this passage; it is one strand of his explanation, alongside bodily causes and involuntary disturbance, not a sufficient explanation of all mental illness.

Impairment and attempts at persuasion

Whether reason itself is damaged in melancholy is disputed. Hercules de Saxonia and Bruel restrict the primary fault to imagination; Montalto’s contrary examples include a person believing himself a shellfish and a despairing religious sufferer fixed on damnation. Burton asks why intact reason would not expose and correct such errors. His settlement with Bottonus puts imagination first and reason later if the illness becomes established. The continuation adds Hercules’s qualification that belief, opinion and reasoning are impaired indirectly through imagination’s failure. Priority here is temporal and dependent upon duration, with a further distinction between direct and secondary impairment.

Reasoned persuasion also belongs to the treatment of disturbing thoughts. Burton has first allowed an imagined sufferer to object that even outstanding thinkers cannot always control their passions. His answer proposes help from the person and friends, with relief distinguished from cure. Persuading by reason is one option alongside contrary action and turning thought elsewhere. A warning attributed to Lemnius immediately describes imaginings so entrenched that reasoning cannot shake them off; Burton nevertheless continues to recommend preparation and resistance. These shifts are essential to the passage’s practical difficulty.

Reason can also be represented as bodily impeded and released. The retention-and-evacuation discussion claims moderate sexual activity helps some people by relieving anger and freeing reason. Its awkward “remitting anger, and reason” compresses two different operations made clear in the original margin: anger is reduced, rational power released. Burton later restricts this alleged benefit to particular antecedent causes and reports authorities who advise against it for many patients. The claim and its restrictions belong to the historical medical argument.

In erotic counsel, “Mercury-reason” makes the person’s rational judgment an inner guide. The preceding Aeneas narrative supplies Mercury’s warning; Burton turns it into a command to resist allurements and attend to debts, danger or occupation. The continuation concedes that the proposed measures may not suffice.

Accounts, arguments and grounds

Ordinary reason need not name a mental faculty at all. Burton promises a reason for his borrowed name, title and subject: an explanation of choices. Corinth prospers “by reason of” its ports: the phrase marks a cause or enabling circumstance. In the medical debate, a reason is an argument that can fail. Burton objects to Fracastorius’s account of fear through cold because its consequence would exclude fear in a condition attributed to scorched choler. The explanatory proposal and Burton’s test of it belong to different voices within the paragraph.

The related adjectives require equal care. “Reasonable Soul” means the soul endowed with reason. A “rational” physician proceeds by learned theory: Burton can call physicians rational while challenging their explanations of elaborate compounds. Finally, a child called “rational in power, not in act” possesses the capacity without yet exercising it. Burton uses that distinction to console someone who desires repentance before putting it into action.

The phrase “not the like reason” introduces an imagined jealous husband’s claim that the same reasoning cannot apply equally to husband and wife. Its object is the comparison of cases, with paternity as the husband’s stated concern. The passage voices an objection within an exchange. Burton subsequently answers with the deliberately provocative possibility that another father might benefit the offspring, rather than simply adopting the husband’s distinction. In the religious argument, good reasons are grounds for belief; Burton distinguishes them from a demand that faith supply certain demonstration. He answers the charge of unthinking submission while still assigning faith a standing beyond human proof.

Formative principles and proportion

The account of beauty uses reasons in an uncommon philosophical sense. Beauty is attributed to goodness flowing through ideas, seeds, reasons and shadows, drawing minds towards unity. The original marginal Latin has the corresponding term for principles. The next definition instead locates beauty in a composite whole’s fitting order, measure and proportion; its marginal ratione belongs to the ratio family and concerns the relation of parts. These are neighbouring explanations, not one technical sense meaning both a logical argument and an arithmetical quotient. The edition’s evidence supports formative principle and proportion here; it does not establish a separate numerical-ratio usage of the English headword.

The Latin family also extends beyond rational cognition. “Qua ratione” asks by what means one can follow Job’s example; “rationem redderent” means that subjects should give an account of their livelihood, in a marginal report about Amasis. “Musicis rationibus” praises musical principles among the pleasures of study, without specifying any particular numerical ratio.

Related entries

Faculty; Intellect; Judgment; Wit; Imagination; Synderesis; Conscience; Will and nill; Appetite; Passion; Cause; Form; Religious melancholy

Places to read

1. · paragraph 2reason as the promised explanation of name, title and subject
2. · paragraph 33by reason of as a causal construction, explaining commercial advantages
3. · paragraph 9rationem reddere as giving an annual account of one’s livelihood
4. · paragraph 22–24the alternative doctrine of animal reason, within a survey of competing accounts of soul
5. · paragraph 19reason’s normative authority over imagination and the contrasting animal classification
6. · paragraph 31–32reason as efficient source, distinct from end and instrument, through the bodily chain of movement
7. · paragraph 22Reasonable as endowed with reason in the definition of the rational soul
8. · paragraph 36–47rational appetite and qualified freedom; chariot, Medea and the competing counsel of lust and reason
9. · paragraph 20–23rival accounts of faculties affected; reason expected to correct error, later impairment and indirect consequence
10. []classification of passions, judgment perverted by will and Actaeon’s dogs; related context at Subsection 3. Classification of the passions · paragraph 5 without the headword
11. · paragraph 19–21reason as a medical explanation tested and rejected within a continuing debate
12. · paragraph 1–7anger relieved and reason released in a historical remedy claim; the original margin distinguishes the verbs and the continuation imposes limits
13. · paragraph 43Musicis rationibus, musical principles in a catalogue of pleasurable studies
14. · paragraph 9–15the sufferer’s objection, conditional hope of relief, reasoned persuasion and entrenched imaginings
15. · paragraph 22qua ratione asks how the proposed endurance can be achieved
16. · paragraph 20rational physicians and Tholosanus’s reported preference for experience over mere reasoning
17. · paragraph 8–9rational physicians challenged to justify the complexity of medicines
18. · paragraph 35–38reasons as formative principles in radiating goodness, followed by marginal ratione as proportion of parts
19. · paragraph 39–44Aeneas and Mercury become an image of reason guiding a lover, with a subsequent practical qualification
20. · paragraph 41–45the imagined husband claims unlike cases; Burton’s provocative response follows
21. · paragraph 24–26grounds for faith and the limits of demonstration, following Julian’s objection
22. rational capacity distinguished from its exercise in an analogy for desired repentance

In this edition

The small phrase “reason another” remains “reason another” in the competing-counsel sentence; its surrounding verbs make the opposition clear. “perverts judgment” becomes “perverts judgement” in the related moral passage, which does not itself repeat reason. In ordinary explanation, “I will shew a reason” becomes “I will explain”; in causal usage, the Corinth phrase becomes “through its excellent ports.” “This reason holds not” becomes “this reasoning does not hold,” preserving Burton’s rejection of the argument.

“Perswading by reason” becomes “reasoning with himself,” supplying the reflexive object from context. “Reasons” in the beauty definition becomes “formative principles.” The marginal Latin ratione is rendered “proportion” in the note’s modern translation, a separate editorial layer from Burton’s original quotation. “Good reasons” becomes “good grounds” in the defence of faith. These paired units distinguish the thinking power, an act of reasoning, a supporting ground and an intelligible principle without treating the modern column as an independent authority.

“Reasonable” becomes “rational” in the soul definition, whereas “rational Physitians” becomes “physicians who reason from theory.” “In power, not in act” becomes “in potential, though not in its exercise.” The equivalents depend on the whole construction.

by reason of

Printed “by reason of” (English; phrase).

Citation convention

Because of or through the causal advantage of something.

Context: Burton explains Corinth’s commercial advantage through its ports despite difficult surrounding land.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording: by reason of Cenchreas and Lecheus, those excellent Ports

Modern rendering, Modern wording: through its excellent ports, Cenchreae and Lechaeum

Alignment convention

Alignment convention

Supplied or implicit wording: The modern clause reorders the port names; the quoted modern unit identifies the same ports.

judgment

Printed “judgment” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Recognition of what ought to be done, here distorted by an obstinate will.

Context: The will is the agent of perversion; this related passage develops reason’s moral conflict without the word reason.

Source: original body

Locator qualification: Do not remove bracketed or repeated-page qualifier.; This source group includes repeated printed 96–97 and supplied 98–99; see SUPPLIED_OPENING and SOURCE_DJR_040.

Source wording: this stubborn will of ours perverts judgment

Mercury-reason

Printed “Mercury-reason” (English; phrase).

Citation convention

One’s own reason personified as Mercury, the guide recalling Aeneas from love to departure.

Context: Burton makes the literary example a command to the lover, then gives practical objects of attention; the next paragraph admits this may not ease him.

Source: original body

Source wording: Let thy Mercury-reason rule thee

musicae rationes

Printed “Musicis rationibus” (Latin; phrase).

Citation convention

Musical principles or theoretical accounts of music.

Context: The quoted praise of learned studies calls these delightful; the margin names Cardano but gives no exact work. The supplied passage does not specify particular numerical ratios.

Source: original body

Source wording: quid jucundius Musicis rationibus

Original wording: jucundius Musicis rationibus

Modern rendering, Modern wording: more delightful than musical principles

Alignment convention

Alignment convention

Qualification: The repeated Latin quid is represented by the shared what at the start of the larger modern question; this narrower alignment begins with the comparative.

qua ratione

Printed “qua ratione” (Latin; phrase).

Citation convention

By what way or means; the construction asks how something can be done.

Context: Burton voices a practical question after urging endurance like Job, then reports Chrysostom’s answer; the phrase does not ask for a mathematical ratio.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording: Sed qua ratione potero?

Modern rendering, Modern wording: But how shall I be able to?

Alignment convention

Alignment convention

ratio · ratione

Printed “ratione” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Proportion or arrangement of parts in a definition of beauty.

Context: Original marginal Latin supports the composite-parts definition, distinguished from radiating goodness.

Source: original marginal quotation

Source wording, Original wording: ex congruente ordine, mensura & ratione partium consurgens

Modern rendering, Modern wording: arising from the fitting order, measure and proportion of its parts

Alignment convention

Alignment convention

Edition note: Original marginal quotation distinguished from editorial translation within Burton-labelled note

ratio

Printed “ratio” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Human rational inquiry seeking proof, within a quoted maxim about faith.

Context: Burton quotes Gregory after asserting good grounds for belief; the modern editor distinguishes the Latin wording from a consulted comparison.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording: Fides non habet meritum, ubi humanâ ratio quærit experimentum

Modern rendering, Modern wording: Faith has no merit where human reason seeks proof

Alignment convention

Alignment convention

ratio brutorum

Printed “ratio brutorum” (Latin; phrase).

Citation convention

The reason of nonhuman animals: imagination functioning without a higher governor.

Context: Burton’s local classification gives animal imagination this role; it differs from other reported opinions about animal reason.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording: is ratio brutorum, all the reason they have

Modern rendering, Modern wording: is their reason—all the reason they possess

Alignment convention

Alignment convention

rational

Printed “rational” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Proceeding by learned reasoning or theory, especially in medicine.

Context: Burton challenges theoretically trained physicians to justify complex mixtures; the adjective does not certify their conclusions as correct.

Source: original body

Source wording: the best of our rational Physitians

rational in power and act

Printed “rational in power, not in act” (English; phrase).

Citation convention

Possessing the capacity for reason, as distinct from exercising it.

Context: The child’s rational capacity supplies an analogy for the sufferer’s desire for repentance before its enactment; Burton distinguishes potential from exercise.

Source: original body

Source wording: a child is rational in power, not in act

rationem reddere

Printed “rationem redderent” (Latin; phrase).

Citation convention

Give an account or explanation.

Context: The marginal note attributes to Amasis an annual requirement that subjects account for their livelihood, distinct from the pharaohs named in the body.

Source: original marginal quotation

Source wording, Original wording: ut omnes subditi quotannis rationem redderent unde viverent

Modern rendering, Modern wording: that every subject should give a yearly account of how he earned his living

Alignment convention

Alignment convention

Edition note: independently checked against supplied marginal quotation and its editorial translation, not the modern body

reason · local use 1

Printed “reason” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

An explanation or account of why the author chose his name, title and subject.

Context: Burton promises limited explanation after playfully declining to identify himself.

Source: original body

Source wording: I will shew a reason, both of this usurped name, title, and subject

reason · Reason · local use 1

Printed “Reason” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

The higher directive power which should govern human imagination.

Context: Imagination is the subject governed; the qualification should be makes this a norm, not an invariant fact.

Source: original body

Source wording: In men it is subject and governed by Reason, or at least should be

reason · Reason · local use 2

Printed “Reason” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

A source of movement through apprehension, distinct from the desired end and bodily instrument.

Context: The desired or avoided object is the end; reason or subordinate imagination moves appetite, which moves the moving faculty and organ.

Source: original body

Source wording: The efficient cause in man is Reason, or his subordinate Phantasie

reason · Reason · local use 3

Printed “Reason” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Rational guidance by which the will pursues or rejects what understanding has judged.

Context: This refers to rational appetite, contrasted with sensitive appetite guided by sense.

Source: original body

Source wording: so in this we are carried by Reason

reason · local use 2

Printed “reason” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

The deliberative counsel competing with desire.

Context: Burton glosses the preceding speech of Ovid’s Medea; recognizing a better course does not secure action.

Source: original body

Source wording: Lust counsels one thing, reason another

reason · Reason · local use 4

Printed “Reason” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

The power expected to detect a false conclusion and correct a mistaken conviction.

Context: The question challenges a doctrine that imagination alone is damaged; free here means unimpaired, not a general declaration of free will.

Source: original body

Source wording: Why doth not Reason detect the Fallacy, settle and perswade, if she be free?

reason · local use 3

Printed “reason” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

The rational faculty that Burton says may become impaired after imagination in established illness.

Context: Burton chooses a qualified temporal account with Bottonus, then adds Hercules’s account of indirect impairment.

Source: original body

Source wording: it is first in Imagination, and afterwards in reason; if the disease be inveterate

reason · local use 4

Printed “reason” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

An explanatory argument offered for a cause of symptoms.

Context: Burton rejects Fracastorius’s cold-only explanation because it would exclude fear in melancholy arising from adust choler.

Source: original body

Source wording: but this reason holds not

reason · local use 5

Printed “reason” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Deliberative persuasion directed at changing a troubling thought.

Context: Burton offers this among several means of alteration, after allowing the sufferer’s objection to easy precepts.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording: perswading by reason

Modern rendering, Modern wording: reasoning with himself

Alignment convention

Alignment convention

Supplied or implicit wording: The reflexive himself is supplied from the therapeutic context.

reason · local use 6

Printed “reason” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Persuasive thought that entrenched imaginings may resist.

Context: Burton reports Lemnius’s warning about imaginings that grow powerful; the following paragraph still urges resistance.

Source: original body

Source wording: by no reason, art, counsel, or perswasion they may be shaken off

reason · reasons · local use 1

Printed “reasons” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Formative or intelligible principles through which goodness is said to radiate as beauty.

Context: Burton attributes this Platonist definition to Plato; its exact intermediary remains unresolved.

Source: original body

Source wording: by ideas, seeds, reasons, shadowes

reason · local use 7

Printed “reason” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

The ground of comparison or reasoning said to apply to a case.

Context: An imagined husband objects to equal treatment of adultery; the claim is voiced as his reply, not silently adopted by Burton.

Source: original body

Source wording: ’Tis not the like reason betwixt man and woman

reason · reasons · local use 2

Printed “reasons” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Grounds supporting belief, distinguished in the same passage from certain demonstration.

Context: Burton answers Julian’s objection; reported Aquinas and Gregory formulations support his Christian argument.

Source: original body

Source wording: we do absolutely believe it, and upon good reasons

reason · local use 8

Printed “reason” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

A power of rational cognition which one reported doctrine attributes to animals as well as humans in differing degrees.

Context: This is one opinion among competing accounts, not a universal assertion of Burton’s faculty scheme.

Source: original body

Source wording: beasts have reason as well as men, though for some defect of Organs, not in such measure

reason · local use 9

Printed “reason” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Rational power represented as released from obstruction by a bodily remedy.

Context: The original margin distinguishes the verbs: sexual activity releases obstructed reason and relieves anger. The body’s single remitting compresses both. Later paragraphs restrict this alleged benefit to particular antecedent causes and report contrary medical advice.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording: remitting anger, and reason, that was otherwise bound

Modern rendering, Modern wording: relieving anger and freeing reason that was otherwise held captive

Alignment convention

Alignment convention

Supplied or implicit wording: Freeing is supplied in the modern body to make explicit the different action on reason, as stated by Solvit in original marginal the accompanying note.

reasonable

Printed “Reasonable” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Endowed with reason; here naming the rational soul rather than an agreeable or moderate temperament.

Context: Burton reports philosophers’ definition, including life, perception, understanding and voluntary choice.

Source: original body

Source wording: This Reasonable Soul