To the two queries you put to me, “What are first principles?” and “What is the criterion of truth?” I find it suitable to append some preliminary remarks on “The Rights of Reason.”

The solution you expect is, I presume, a reasonable one. You do not wish me to take into account any opinions that cannot bear the test of reason.

Your queries derive their greatest pertinency from the state of non-material philosophy; and, possibly, might have been, in some measure, prompted by this consideration. That double-minded way of inquiring into truth, which only in part reasons, while it in part dogmatises, imagines, and assumes, is, it is obvious, in morals, metaphysics, and religion, one of our inheritances from former times. The battle has been won in the material department, but is still undecided on the other wing.

What, then, is Reason, and what are its Rights?

Every human inquiry that asks, What is right, proper, or correct? necessarily, in doing so, asks, What is it reasonable to think, believe, or do? in the points inquired into. The faculty—whatever may be its nature—whereby we find ourselves able, under certain circumstances, to answer this question, we call reason. The rights of reason may be said to consist in the concession to it of a certain absolute power in the decision of truth, divisible under two heads thus—a power of deciding what are the questions whereon it is able to decide, and a power of deciding those questions.

One of the many ways of disparaging the rights of reason is—openly or covertly to doubt or deny that morals, metaphysics, and religion, are—in the full sense of the word—sciences. This is to withdraw them from the empire of reason, and to hand them over to some rival pretender.

No science can flourish while it is understood that its discussion must be made palatable to the public. In any supposable code of the rights of reason, one primary article would limit and define the functions of the public in the investigation of truth—a topic which, together with the kindred inquiry, Who are the public? is suggested by your second query.

Mankind have naturally a degree of antipathy for reason. They have found Reason, in the work he affects, dull, in the help he furnishes, deficient, in the truth he unveils, ugly, in the rule he arrogates, imperious. Barbarism, in all its stages, may be said to be founded, not merely on ignorance, but on a state of the inclinations that revolts from reason.

Two competitors have always disputed the rights of reason; authority or precedent, and faith or conscience. Conscience, early or late, must receive almost all his light from authority; and, therefore, in respect to opinion, may generally be called the creature of authority. Yet, in a moral aspect, authority is confessedly of no account, and conscience has a sole jurisdiction. A large portion of mankind have, in our times, outgrown the error of resting their sense of duty on the mere dictate of other men. The only legitimate directors of human conduct are now generally admitted to be conscience and reason; the conscience must be exclusively one’s own, but the reason need not entirely—and, indeed, cannot in any great proportion—be one’s own, but may be partly that of one’s neighbor.

The question of the division of power between these two potentates, though not yet understood by the public, does not seem to be more complicated than that analogous one just alluded to, and of which they evidently understand the gist.

For authority, as above intimated, though the venerable instructor of conscience, is yet morally subjected to him; and, not dissimilarly, have conscience and reason reciprocal claims of precedence on each other. Reason is the judge, but he is bound, under conscience, to give a sufficient and attentive hearing to any pleadings that conscience may have to offer, and conscience is the pleader, but he is bound, under reason, to conform to whatever verdicts reason declares himself competent to render.

If history in this particular can be considered as having disclosed a necessary sequence, civilisation progresses in the following order:—The general mind, in becoming acquainted with its own powers, first learns an evolution of conscience (and this can only take place through the medium of religion), and last learns to appreciate reason (and this can only happen through the medium of science). While the prerogatives of conscience were insufficiently known, authority usurped them, and while the prerogatives of reason are insufficiently known, authority and conscience conjointly usurp them.

The word conscience I here use in its proper sense, wherein it means either an individual conscience, or the united consciences of more than one supposed to be in accord together, so as to make the acts resulting from this accord constitute single acts of conscience. But the word has taken an improper enlargement of meaning in being often used to signify one conscience claiming something in contravention of another conscience. These two, so different meanings of the word conscience, are seldom duly discriminated by those who use them.

To the rights of reason belongs a certain degree of power, both in regulating the individual conscience, and in solving the differences between opposing ones. Under what conditions, and how far, reason can exercise this office, and what rule he is to follow in so doing, would be an inquiry suggested by my answer to your second query.

Having above mentioned religion and science as the two prime ministers respectively of conscience and reason, I will pursue the subject a little further.

Religion has aimed to have a moral animus by means of a free conscience. Religion has not yet immediately aimed at moral conduct; but, indeed, has been wont, by the mouth of her most strenuous ministers, to assume that the aim at this is already included in that other aim. But a moral animus is but one ingredient in moral conduct, involving the intent only to act morally, without having of itself the least power to realise that intent. Knowledge,—that is, science, exclusively keeps the keys of this power. Such knowledge religion has not yet made one of her aims and ends either directly, or by any coalition with those who have so aimed. Accordingly religion cannot be said hitherto to have been an advocate of the rights of reason. Whatever good things she may have achieved in this cause have been incidental to her advocacy of the Rights of Conscience. Here reason was her weapon (sharpened for this use, and so far valued and treasured), against authority. Her tendency meanwhile, is to impel conscience to infringe on the rights of reason.

Science alone has hitherto been the immediate champion of these rights. But it seems he cannot expect to make that advocacy complete and effectual till he allies himself with religion. This alliance, since it is persuaded by reason, and not by passion, can have science alone for its real mover.

The Rights of Reason may at present be said to be in such a germ of their acknowledgment as were the rights of conscience three centuries ago. Mankind have not hitherto come to acquiesce in the idea of that parsimony of guidance vouchsafed to man, which is found to be the result of claiming for reason the power of calling all human thoughts before his tribunal, and seeing whether he has anything to object to them. Their idea has been that not only suggesting inspiration—(which it does not seem necessary that the advocate of the rights of reason should deny)—but guiding inspiration is given, given too to some rather than to others, and given in such a quality, as to dispense with the supervision of reason. A generation successive to many among whom this doctrine has been taught and believed, will not be prone to any decided rejection of it. Pride of species inclining to exaggerated human pretensions above other earthly creatures, and party pride inclining to exalt self and an associated confraternity into a superiority over the rest of mankind, and supplied with a traditional store of modes of thought and practice adapted to such exclusive pretensions, and other native tendencies of the human mind, persuade in the same direction.

I have thought it suitable to premise this short sketch of the Rights of Reason, and the opponents of them, to an endeavor to answer your queries in a thoroughly reasonable way, a way which cannot be said to be the more fashionable one in the treatment of metaphysical questions.