ABSTRACT
A literary philosopher may imagine that moral harmonies presuppose reason; yet in the generative order of nature the opposite is the case. Many a harmony must be established in the cosmos and in some animal psyche before reason dawns on any living mind. The political result of this is that moral harmonies may exist in society without reason having ever puzzled any of its members or society ever having a mind of its own. Reason is a species of insight, by which essential relations are seen to obtain between ideal terms. It therefore cannot arise before animal sensibility has offered such terms to actual attention, and until the stress of anxious life has given the mind time to pause and notice the peculiar character of one given term contrasted with the peculiar character of another: as for instance the difference, when a cloud suddenly hides the sun, between sunshine and shade. Before reason exists there must be, therefore, not only a varied sensibility in the psyche but comprehensive and synthetic power to perceive the essential contrasts and similarities between given ideas, and eventually to designate these contrasts and similarities by appropriate words.
