So far, however, is reason from being the source of morality that it is reason alone which makes us capable of being rascals, which the lower animals cannot be.  It is reason which enables us to form an evil resolution and to keep it when the provocation to evil is removed; it enables us, for example, to nurse vengeance.  Although at the moment that we have an opportunity of fulfilling our resolution the better consciousness may manifest itself as love or charity, it is by force of reason, in pursuance of some evil maxim, that we act against it.  Thus Goethe says that a man may use his reason only for the purpose of being more bestial than any beast: 

  Er hat Vernunft, doch braucht er sie allein
  Um theirischer als jedes Thier zu sein.

For not only do we, like the beasts, satisfy the desires of the moment, but we refine upon them and stimulate them in order to prepare the desire for the satisfaction.

Whenever we think that we perceive a trace of reason in the lower animals, it fills us with surprise.  Now our surprise is not excited by the good and affectionate disposition which some of them exhibit—­we recognise that as something other than reason—­but by some action in them which seems to be determined not by the impression of the moment, but by a resolution previously made and kept.  Elephants, for instance, are reported to have taken premeditated revenge for insults long after they were suffered; lions, to have requited benefits on an opportunity tardily offered.  The truth of such stories has, however, no bearing at all on the question, What do we mean by reason?  But they enable us to decide whether in the lower animals there is any trace of anything that we can call reason.

Kant not only declares that all our moral sentiments originate in reason, but he lays down that reason, in my sense of the word, is a condition of moral action; as he holds that for an action to be virtuous and meritorious it must be done in accordance with maxims, and not spring from a resolve taken under some momentary impression.  But in both contentions he is wrong.  If I resolve to take vengeance on some one, and when an opportunity offers, the better consciousness in the form of love and humanity speaks its word, and I am influenced by it rather than by my evil resolution, this is a virtuous act, for it is a manifestation of the better consciousness.  It is possible to conceive of a very virtuous man in whom the better consciousness is so continuously active that it is never silent, and never allows his passions to get a complete hold of him.  By such consciousness he is subject to a direct control, instead of being guided indirectly, through the medium of reason, by means of maxims and moral principles.  That is why a man may have weak reasoning powers and a weak understanding and yet have a high sense of morality and be eminently good; for the most important element in a man depends as little on intellectual as it does on physical strength.  Jesus says, Blessed are the poor in spirit.  And Jacob Boehme has the excellent and noble observation:  Whoso lies quietly in his own will, like a child in the womb, and lets himself be led and guided by that inner principle from which he is sprung, is the noblest and richest on earth.[1]