f Reason.

The human reason, that haughty faculty, deified in our age by a myriad
of perverse and commonplace minds known under the derisive and doubly
vain title of freethinkers, is but blind, despite its high opinion of
its own insight. Yes, and we affirm by certain intuition that man's
reason is not and cannot be otherwise than blind, aside from the
revealing principle which only enlightens it in proportion to its
subordination; for, abandoned to itself, reason can only err and must
fatally fall into an abyss of illusions.

The melancholy age in which we live but too often offers us an example
of the lamentable mistakes into which we are hurried by misguided
reason, which, yielding to a criminal presumption, deserts without
remorse the principle super-abounding in _life, light_ and _glory_.

To understand such an anomaly, to explain how reason, which constitutes
one of the highest attributes of man, is so far subject to error, it is
essential to have a thorough apprehension of the complexity of its
nature. What, then, is the real nature of the reason so little studied
and so illy known by those very men who raise altars in its honor? Let
us try to produce a clear demonstration. And let us first say that
reason does not constitute a primary principle in man; for a primary
_principle_ could never mistake its object. Neither is it a primary
_faculty_; it is only the form or the manner of being of such a faculty,
and thus cannot be a light in itself. The rays by which it shines are
external to it in the sense that it receives them from the principle
which governs and fertilizes it. Still, let us say that, although
neither a principle nor a faculty, reason is none the less, with
conscience, of which it forms the base, the noblest power of man; for
this power God created free; free from subjection to the principle that
enlightens it; free, too, to escape from it. Yet every power necessarily
recognizes a guiding principle to whose service it needs must bow; but
to reason alone it is granted to avoid the law which imperiously rules
the relations of the harmonious subordination of principiant faculties
to their principles. Hence the error or possible blindness of reason;
hence also its incomparable grandeur, which lies solely in its free and
spontaneous subordination. These principles established, let us go still
farther, and penetrate deeper into the mysterious genius of reason.

authorized to define reason. He did it