ABSTRACT
In one sense of the word all men are rational, and therefore it seems odd to argue that education should be concerned to make men rational. It was Aristotle who first defined man as a rational animal, and he meant by this that man was to be distinguished from other animals in that he had the ability to think, calculate or reason. Other animals can respond to their environment, they can sense the heat from flames, for example, and withdraw from the fire. Instinctively they can seek shelter in appropriate places from bad weather or from enemies. Not only do they come to respond in a regular manner to specific signals, but they can also be conditioned by man to respond to artificial signals. The wild animal senses his prey and automatically responds with the appropriate hunting behaviour. The dog, taken over as a household pet, automatically responds to certain food-preparing activities on the part of the owner. In extreme cases, as in Pavlov’s experiments, the animal is conditioned to respond to signals such as the ringing of a bell. But what animals cannot do is act purposively. They cannot decide to do this rather than that on certain grounds, they cannot work out what is going on, or reflect upon the possibility that the ringing bells may be part of some experiment on their behaviour. Man differs from other animals in that he is able to act purposively, to plan, choose ends and adopt means, and in that he is able to control his environment rather than simply respond to it. He is able to memorize, to imagine, foresee, to predict, to hypothesize. To use the imprecise term which in common language includes all such activities, man has the capacity to think. (That, it will be recalled, was the argument of Chapter 2.)
Except in rare instances we all have this capacity, and hence the statement that all men are rational. But the fact that all men have the capacity to think does not mean that all men are equally good at thinking, just as while virtually all men have the ability to see, they do not all see equally well.
