PASSION AND REASON

Freethought Review, Volume I, Issue 10, 1 July 1884, Page 13

PASSION AND REASON

Even among those earnestly devoted to human welfare, capable of sacrifices for truth and right, much power is misdirected, and honest enthusiasm wasted, because reason does not organize the method as well as the cause, and earnestness ends in rage. The religious training of the world has been contrary to that of the Happy Warrior. It has instructed us to fight against the evils of the world as the work of an enemy. Our ideal warrior faces evils as things he has to control, bereave of their bad influence, transmute to good; and in great emergencies, joined with good or bad issues, he is happy; in the conflict, keeps the law in calmness, because it is a matter of law, of reason, and not a personal combat. But theologies have taught that it is a personal combat —a great struggle between Ormuzd and Ahriman, God and Satan, and Christ and Antichrist. And though an age has arrived largely liberated from that notion, the superstition that the universe is a government of combat has moulded the brain of man, still kindles liberal blood, and lowers the whole struggle for reform beneath the plane where ideas can operate to an arena where wills exchange blows, and the stronger will prevails. It does not make much difference, practically whether men ascribe the evils of the world to fiends invisible, or fiends in human shape; so fighting they may fight bravely, but only in the dark. The struggle of one will with another of personality against personality, generates passion ; but it is a fire that consumes judgment, whether directed against a party beneath the earth or on it.—M. D. Conway.