Reason

See Reasoning Lewis sees self-existent Reason as rooted in "... an eternal, self-existent, rational Being, whom we call God." Miracles 4.6 Miracles 6.2 "A man's Rational Thinking is //just so much// of his share in eternal Reason as the state of his brain allows to become operative: ..." Miracles 6.2 " ... Reason is something more than cerebral biochemistry."

The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it. //The Abolition of Man//, Chapter 1, 7th paragraph from the end

As the king governs by his executive, so Reason in man must rule the mere appetites by means of the 'spirited element.' //The Abolition of Man//, Chapter 1, 2nd paragraph from the end

The preservation of society, and of the species itself, are ends that do not hang on the precarious thread of Reason: they are given by Instinct. //The Abolition of Man//, chapter 2, paragraph 7

All possible knowledge, then, depends on the validity of reasoning. If the feeling of certainty which we express by words like //must be// and //therefore// and //since// is a real perception of how things outside our own minds really "must" be, well and good. But if this certainty is merely a feeling in our own minds and not a genuine insight into realities beyond them--if it merely represents the way our minds happen to work--then we can have no knowledge. Unless human reasoning is valid no science can be true. It follows that no account of the universe can be true unless that account leaves it possible for our thinking to be a real insight. A theory which explained everything else in the whole universe but which made it impossible to believe that our thinking was valid, would be utterly out of court. For that theory would itself have been reached by thinking, and if thinking is not valid that theory would, of course, be itself demolished. It would have destroyed its own credentials. It would be an argument which proved that no argument was sound--a proof that there are no such things as proofs--which is nonsense. //Miracles//, Appendix C, paragraph 5

Every object you see before you at this moment--the walls, ceiling, and furniture, the book, your own washed hands and cut fingernails, bears witness to the colonisation of Nature by Reason: for none of this matter would have been in these states if Nature had had her way. //Miracles//, chapter 4, paragraph 3

Let us go back to the question of Logic. I have tried to show that you reach a self-contradiction if you say that logical inference is, in principle, invalid. On the other hand, nothing is more obvious than that we frequently make false inferences: from ignorance of some of the factors involved, from inattention, from inefficiencies in the system of symbols (linguistic or otherwise) which we are using, from the secret influence of our unconscious wishes or fears. We are therefore driven to combine a steadfast faith in inference as such with a wholesome scepticism about each particular instance of inference in the mind of a human thinker. As I have said, there is no such thing (strictly speaking) as human reason: but there is emphatically such a thing as human thought--in other words, the various specifically human conceptions of Reason, failures of complete rationality, which arise in a wishful and lazy human mind utilizing a tired human brain. The difference between acknowledging this and being sceptical about Reason itself, is enormous. For in the one case we should be saying that reality contradicts Reason, whereas now we are only saying that total Reason--cosmic or super-cosmic Reason--corrects human imperfections of Reason. Now correction is not the same as mere contradiction. When your false reasoning is corrected you 'see the mistakes': the true reasoning thus takes up into itself whatever was already rational in your original thought. You are not moved into a totally new world; you are given //more// and //purer// of what you already had in a small quantity and badly mixed with foreign elements. To say that Reason is objective is to say that all our false reasonings could in principle be corrected by more Reason. I have to add 'in principle' because, of course, the reasoning necessary to give us absolute truth about the whole universe might be (indeed, certainly would be) too complicated for any human mind to hold it all together or even to keep on attending. But that, again, would be a defect in the human instrument, not in Reason. //De Futilitate//, paragraph 25

He turned to Reason and spoke. 'You can tell me, lady. Is there such a place as the Island in the West, or is it only a feeling of my own mind?'

'I cannot tell you,' said she, 'because you do not know.'

'But you know.'

'But I can tell you only what you know. I can bring things out of the dark part of your mind into the light part of it. But now you ask me what is not even in the dark part of your mind.' //Pilgrim’s Regress//, Book 4, chapter 2, paragraphs 2-5

Five senses; an incurably abstract intellect; a haphazardly selective memory; a set of preconceptions and assumptions so numerous that I can never examine more than a minority of them--never become even conscious of them all. How much of total reality can such an apparatus let through? //A Grief Observed//, chapter 4, paragraph 11

His reason, or what we commonly take to be reason in our own world, was all in favour of tasting this miracle again; the childlike innocence of fruit, the labours he had undergone, the uncertainty of the future, all seemed to commend the action. Yet something seemed opposed to this "reason." It is difficult to suppose that this opposition came from desire, for what desire would turn from so much deliciousness? But for whatever cause, it appeared to him better not to taste again. Perhaps the experience had been so complete that repetition would be a vulgarity--like asking to hear the same symphony twice in a day. //Perelandra//, chapter 3, 3rd paragraph from the end

Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. //Dark// would be without meaning. //Mere Christianity//, Book 2, chapter 1, last paragraph

In Selected Literary Essays, "Bluspels and Flalansferes: A Semantic Nightmare," CSL says this about Reason and Imagination:

//Intellectus// is the higher, so that if we call it 'understanding', the Coleridgean distinction which puts 'reason' above 'understanding' inverts the traditional order. Boethius, it will be remembered, distinguishes //intelligentia// from //ratio//; the former being enjoyed in its perfection by angels. //Intellectus// is that in man which approximates most nearly to angelic //intelligentia//; it is in fact //obumbrata intelligentia//, clouded intelligence, or a shadow of intelligence. Its relation to reason is thus described by Aquinas: 'intellect (//intelligere//) is the simple (i.e. indivisible, uncompounded) grasp of an intelligible truth, whereas reasoning (//ratiocinari//) is the progression towards an intelligible truth by going from one understood (//intellecto//) point to another. The difference between them is thus like the difference between rest and motion or between possession and acquisition (Ia, LXXIX, art. 8). We are enjoying //intellectus// when we 'just see' a self-evident truth; we are exercising //ratio// when we proceed step by step to prove a truth which is not self-evident. A cognitive life in which all truth can be simply 'seen would be the life of an //intelligentia//, an angel. A life of unmitigated //ratio// where nothing was simply 'seen' and all had to be proved, would presumably be impossible; for nothing can be proved if nothing is self-evident. Man's mental life is spent in laboriously connecting those frequent, but momentary, flashes of //intelligentia// which constitute //intellectus//.

When //ratio// is used with this precision and distinguished from //intellectus//, it is, I take it, very much what we mean by 'reason' today; that is, as Johnson defines it, 'The power by which man deduces one proposition from another, or proceeds from premises to consequences'. But, having so defined it, he gives as his first example, from Hooker, 'Reason is the director of man's will, discovering in action what is good'. There would seem to be a startling discrepancy between the example and the definition. No doubt, if A is good for its own sake, we may discover by reasoning that, since B is the means to A, therefore B would be a good thing to do. But by what sort of deduction, and from what sort of premises, could we reach the proposition 'A is good for its own sake'? This must be accepted from some other source before the reasoning can begin; a source which has been variously identified--with 'conscience' (conceived as the Voice of God), with some moral 'sense' or 'taste', with an emotion ('a good heart'), with the standards of one's social group, with the super-ego. The Discarded Image, chapter 7, Section D Rational Soul, paragraphs 2-3

It is Reason herself which teaches us not to rely on Reason only in this matter. For Reason knows that she cannot work without materials. When it becomes clear that you cannot find out by reasoning whether the cat is in the linen-cupboard, it is Reason herself who whispers, "Go and look. This is not my job: it is a matter for the senses." So here. The materials for correcting our abstract conception of God cannot be supplied by Reason: she will be the first to tell you to go and try experience--"Oh, taste and see!" For of course she will have already pointed out that your present position is absurd. As long as we remain Erudite Limpets we are forgetting that if no-one had ever seen more of God than we, we should have no reason even to believe Him immaterial, immutable, impassible and all the rest of it. Even that negative knowledge which seems to us so enlightened is only a relic left over from the positive knowledge of better men--only the pattern which that heavenly wave left on the sand when it retreated. //Miracles,// chapter 11, 7th paragraph from the end

REASON

Set on the soul's acropolis the reason stands A virgin, arm'd, commercing with celestial light, And he who sins against her has defiled his own Virginity: no cleansing makes his garment white; So clear is reason. But how dark, imagining, Warm, dark, obscure and infinite, daughter of Night: Dark is her brow, the beauty of her eyes with sleep Is loaded, and her pains are long, and her delight. Tempt not Athene. Wound not in her fertile pains Demeter, nor rebel against her mother-right. Oh who will reconcile in me both maid and mother, Who make in me a concord of the depth and height? Who make imagination's dim exploring touch Ever report the same as intellectual sight? Then could I truly say, and not deceive, Then wholly say, that I BELIEVE. //Poems//, page 81