find is meaningless save as measured by searching, and so instincts and
passions must be elevated into reason.'[24] In the lower creatures
instinct does the {65} work of reason--sufficiently for the simple
conditions in which the animal lives. And in the earlier stages of human
life instinct plays an important part. But when man, both as an
individual and as humanity, advances to a more complex life, instinct is
unequal to the new task confronting him. We cannot be content to be
guided by instinct. Reason asserts itself and seeks to permeate all our
experiences, and give unity and purpose to all our thoughts and acts.

The recent disparagement of intellectualism is probably a reaction
against the extreme absolutism of German idealism which, beginning with
Kant, found fullest expression in Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. But the
true way to meet exclusive rationalism is not to discredit the function
of mind, but to give to it a larger domain of experience. We do not
exalt faith by emptying it of all intellectual content and reducing it to
mere subjective feeling; nor do we explain genius by ascribing its acts
to blind, unthinking impulse. 'The real is the rational,' says Hegel.
Truth, in other words, presupposes a rational universe which we, as
rational beings, must assume in all our thought and effort. To set up
faith against reason, or intuition against intelligence is to set the
mind against itself. We cannot set up an order of facts, as Professor
James would have us do, outside the intellectual realm; for what does not
fall within our experience can have for us no meaning, and what for us
has no meaning cannot be an object of faith. An ineradicable belief in
the rationality of the world is the ultimate basis of all art, morality
and religion. To rest in mere intuition or emotion and not to seek
objective truth would be for man to renounce his true prerogative and to
open the door for all kinds of superstition and caprice.

III. In the truest sense it may be claimed that this is the teaching of
Christianity. When Christ says that we are to love God with our minds He
seems to imply that there is such a thing as intelligent affection. The
distinctive feature of our Lord's claim is that God is not satisfied when
His creatures render a merely implicit obedience; He {66} desires also
the enthusiastic use of their intellect, intent on knowing everything
that it is possible for men to know about His character an