The discursive faculty then becomes what our
Shakspeare with happy precision calls "discourse of reason."
We will now take up our reasoning again from the words "motion in
itself."
It is evident then, that the reason, as the irradiative power, and the
representative of the infinite, judges the understanding as the faculty
of the finite, and cannot without error be judged by it. When this is
attempted, or when the understanding in its 'synthesis' with the
personal will, usurps the supremacy of the reason, or affects to
supersede the reason, it is then what St. Paul calls the mind of the
flesh ([Greek: phronaema sarkos]) or the wisdom of this world. The
result is, that the reason is super-finite; and in this relation, its
antagonist is the insubordinate understanding, or mind of the flesh.
IV. Reason, as one with the absolute will, ('In the beginning was the
Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God',) and
therefore for man the certain representative of the will of God, is
above the will of man as an individual will. We have seen in III.
that it stands in antagonism to all mere particulars; but here it
stands in antagonism to all mere individual interests as so many
selves, to the personal will as seeking its objects in the
manifestation of itself for itself--'sit pro ratione
voluntas';--whether this be realized with adjuncts, as in the lust
of the flesh, and in the lust of the eye; or without adjuncts, as in
the thirst and pride of power, despotism, egoistic ambition.
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