REASON IS THE FACULTY BY WHICH MAN obtains knowledge of things that are perceptible to his senses, as well as those things which are not. Hooker explores how it is that man attains the knowledge of things beyond the senses. Man's desire to know things beyond the mere sensory must be spurred by an end which incites or provokes this desire. "How should that divine power of the soul, that 'Spirit of our mind,'" as St. Paul calls it in his letter to the Ephesians (4:23), "ever stir itself unto action, unless it have also the like spur?" I.7.1, 77.
Hooker then explores the ends for which man works or acts, and notes that the good that some of the actions or works man undertakes are the very actions or works themselves, in other words, the actions or works are ends in themselves, whereas in other situations, the actions or works are means to a further end.
Hooker continues with the observation that man is a free agent, "we do wittingly work and freely," and so man is not like the natural agents compelled to act in one manner, "but that it is in our power to leave the things we do undone." I.7.2, 77.
Title Page of Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie
Two things are therefore necessary for man to act, knowledge of an end, and the will to be able to pursue that end. "So that two principal fountains there are of human action, Knowledge and Will, which will in things tending towards any ends is termed Choice." I.7.2, 78. An example of this is given in Deuteronomy 30:19: "I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Chose therefore life . . . " In this passage is distinguished both Knowledge and the need for Will or Choice.
Hooker then considers it important, "a matter of no small moment," to distinguish the will "from that inferior natural desire which we call appetite." I.7.3, 78. He distinguishes will from appetite thus:
Understanding requires a determination of what is good, and so "the laws of well doing are the dictates of right reason." I.7.4, 79. Children, those mentally deficient, and the mad have not the use of reason, and so they must rely "for their guide the reason that guides other men, which are tutors over them to seek and to procure their good for them." I.7.4, 79. Other than these exceptions, in the rest of men there is reason that guides them to good and evil: "In the rest there is that light of reason, whereby good may be known from evil, and which discovering the same rightly is termed right." I.7.4, 79.
Right is not determined by will, but by reason, and reason must both indicate the good and its possibility. "The will notwithstanding does not incline to have or do that which reason teaches to be good, unless the same [reason] does also teach it to be possible." I.7.5, 79. "Let reason teach impossibility in anything, and the will of man does let it go; a thing impossible it does not affect, the impossibility thereof being manifest." I.7.5, 79. What is true of reason is not true of appetite, as appetite sometimes pines for the impossible. How many of us have not sighed with Virgil's Evander those impossible lines:
There is no good that has not its concomitant evil, and there is no evil that has not its concomitant good, for "things are blended." With respect to any particular object, therefore, it is not so good that it may not have attached or appended to it "some difficulty or unpleasant quality annexed to it," I.7.6, 79, thus allowing us to "shrink and decline it." The contrary is also true: there is no particular evil "which has not some appearance of goodness whereby to insinuate itself" to us as a good. I.7.6, 80. It is under the appearance of a good that evil so insinuates itself and moves our will. "For evil as evil cannot be desired: if that be desired which is evil, the cause is the goodness which is, or seems to be joined with it." I.7.6, 80. In an opposite vein, goodness does not move us "by being, but by being apparent; and therefore many things are neglected which are most precious, only because the value of them lies hid." I.7.6, 80.
It is in the nature of things that the tug of a sensible goodness tends to be stronger than a goodness apprehended by reason. Unless reason therefore intervenes to teach otherwise, we incline to sensory goods. And even if reason dictates otherwise, the attraction of the sensory good is sufficiently present so as to allow us the freedom to neglect the instruction of reason.
But the tug of evil either under the appearance of sensible impressions of good or the artificially-induced or conventionally-induced impressions of good should not lead us to thing that we are excused from guilt. "For there was never sin committed, wherein a less good was not preferred before a greater, and that willfully." Such choice of a lesser or apparent good over a greater or real good creates disorder,
It is true, Hooker concedes, that the "search of knowledge is a thing painful and the painfulness of knowledge is that which makes the will so hardly inclinable thereunto." I.7.7, 81. One cannot discount also the result of the "divine malediction" following Adam's sin which have weakened the "instruments . . . wherewithal the soul (especially in reasoning) does work." I.7.7, 81. There is sort of post-lapsarian torpor, a moral inertia in us, that "prefers rest in ignorance before wearisome labor to know." I.7.7, 81.
Portrait of Richard Hooker
Hooker then explores the ends for which man works or acts, and notes that the good that some of the actions or works man undertakes are the very actions or works themselves, in other words, the actions or works are ends in themselves, whereas in other situations, the actions or works are means to a further end.
Hooker continues with the observation that man is a free agent, "we do wittingly work and freely," and so man is not like the natural agents compelled to act in one manner, "but that it is in our power to leave the things we do undone." I.7.2, 77.
Title Page of Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie Two things are therefore necessary for man to act, knowledge of an end, and the will to be able to pursue that end. "So that two principal fountains there are of human action, Knowledge and Will, which will in things tending towards any ends is termed Choice." I.7.2, 78. An example of this is given in Deuteronomy 30:19: "I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Chose therefore life . . . " In this passage is distinguished both Knowledge and the need for Will or Choice.
Hooker then considers it important, "a matter of no small moment," to distinguish the will "from that inferior natural desire which we call appetite." I.7.3, 78. He distinguishes will from appetite thus:
The object of appetite is whatsoever sensible good may be wished for; the object of will is that good which reason does lead us to seek. . . . [A]ppetite is the will's solicitor, and the will is appetite's controller; what we covet with one, by the other we often reject, neither is any other desire termed properly will, but that whre reason and understanding, or the show of reason prescribes the thing desired.I.7.3, 78. Hooker observes that affections are not always trustworthy inasmuch as they are not voluntary or derived by reason. "Affections, as joy, and grief, and fear, and anger, with such like; being as it were the sundry fashions and forms of appetite, can neither rise at the concept of a thing indifferent, nor yet choose but rise at the sight of some things. Wherefore it is not altogether in our power, whether we will be stirred with affections or no." I.7.3, 78. On the other hand, "actions which issue from the disposition of the will are in the power thereof to be performed or stayed [i.e., prevented]." I.7.3, 78. There are some appetites, however, that can be controlled by reason, even though the appetites themselves are not derived by reason (e.g., eating, drinking, the need for sleep). In such cases, the yielding of the will to the appetites makes them as voluntary as if they had stemmed directly from the will. "In such cases therefore of such facility the will does yield her assent, as it were with a kind of silence, by not dissenting; in which respect her force is not so apparent as in express mandates or prohibitions, especially upon advice and consultation going before." I.7.3, 78-79.
Understanding requires a determination of what is good, and so "the laws of well doing are the dictates of right reason." I.7.4, 79. Children, those mentally deficient, and the mad have not the use of reason, and so they must rely "for their guide the reason that guides other men, which are tutors over them to seek and to procure their good for them." I.7.4, 79. Other than these exceptions, in the rest of men there is reason that guides them to good and evil: "In the rest there is that light of reason, whereby good may be known from evil, and which discovering the same rightly is termed right." I.7.4, 79.
Right is not determined by will, but by reason, and reason must both indicate the good and its possibility. "The will notwithstanding does not incline to have or do that which reason teaches to be good, unless the same [reason] does also teach it to be possible." I.7.5, 79. "Let reason teach impossibility in anything, and the will of man does let it go; a thing impossible it does not affect, the impossibility thereof being manifest." I.7.5, 79. What is true of reason is not true of appetite, as appetite sometimes pines for the impossible. How many of us have not sighed with Virgil's Evander those impossible lines:
O mihi praeteritos referat si Iupiter annos!Aeneid VIII.560. (Reason would say the words of T. S. Eliot in "Ash Wednesday," "Because I do not hope to turn again / Because I do not hope / Because I do not hope to turn.")
If only Jupiter would restore me those bygone years!
There is no good that has not its concomitant evil, and there is no evil that has not its concomitant good, for "things are blended." With respect to any particular object, therefore, it is not so good that it may not have attached or appended to it "some difficulty or unpleasant quality annexed to it," I.7.6, 79, thus allowing us to "shrink and decline it." The contrary is also true: there is no particular evil "which has not some appearance of goodness whereby to insinuate itself" to us as a good. I.7.6, 80. It is under the appearance of a good that evil so insinuates itself and moves our will. "For evil as evil cannot be desired: if that be desired which is evil, the cause is the goodness which is, or seems to be joined with it." I.7.6, 80. In an opposite vein, goodness does not move us "by being, but by being apparent; and therefore many things are neglected which are most precious, only because the value of them lies hid." I.7.6, 80.
It is in the nature of things that the tug of a sensible goodness tends to be stronger than a goodness apprehended by reason. Unless reason therefore intervenes to teach otherwise, we incline to sensory goods. And even if reason dictates otherwise, the attraction of the sensory good is sufficiently present so as to allow us the freedom to neglect the instruction of reason.
Sensible goodness is most apparent, near, and present, which causes the appetite to be therewith strongly provoked. Now pursuit and refusal in the will do follow, the one the affirmation, the other the negation of goodness, which the understanding apprehends, grounding itself upon sense, unless some higher reason do chance to teach the contrary. And if reason have taught it rightly to be good, yet not so apparently that the mind receives it with utter impossibility of being otherwise; still there is place left for the will to take or leave.I.7.6, 80. This ever-present tug of an apparent sensible good, and the freedom of the will to opt for it, is what explains why an apparent sensible good is chosen by men when reason dictates that right action ought to be otherwise. "We are not to marvel at the choice of evil, even then when the contrary is probably known." I.7.6, 80. We ought not further to forget the role that "custom" or the "inuring [of] the mind by long practice" may have against a good that is presented by reason. Bad habits, bad customs, embedded cultural norms and prejudices, all these "leaving there [in the mind] a sensible impression, prevail more than reasonable persuasion." I.7.6, 80.
But the tug of evil either under the appearance of sensible impressions of good or the artificially-induced or conventionally-induced impressions of good should not lead us to thing that we are excused from guilt. "For there was never sin committed, wherein a less good was not preferred before a greater, and that willfully." Such choice of a lesser or apparent good over a greater or real good creates disorder,
as any such choice cannot be done without the singular disgrace of nature, and the utter disturbance of that divine order, whereby the preeminence of chiefest acceptation is by the best things worthily challenged. There is not that good which concerns us, but it has evidence enough for itself, if reasons were diligent to search it out.I.7.7, 80. It is our neglect of that search for real good, "the subtility of Satan inveigling us as it did Eve," the "hastiness of our wills," or "the very custom of evil making the heart obdurate against whatsoever instructions to the contrary," that lead us to choose evil under the guise of apparent good. "Still therefore that wherewith we stand blamable, and can no way excuse it is, In doing evil, we prefer a less good before a greater, the greatness whereof is by reason investigable, and may be known." I.7.7, 80-81.
It is true, Hooker concedes, that the "search of knowledge is a thing painful and the painfulness of knowledge is that which makes the will so hardly inclinable thereunto." I.7.7, 81. One cannot discount also the result of the "divine malediction" following Adam's sin which have weakened the "instruments . . . wherewithal the soul (especially in reasoning) does work." I.7.7, 81. There is sort of post-lapsarian torpor, a moral inertia in us, that "prefers rest in ignorance before wearisome labor to know." I.7.7, 81.
For a spur of diligence thereof we have a natural thirst after knowledge ingrafted in us. But by reason of that original weakness in the instruments, without which the understanding part is not able in this world by discourse to work, the very conceit of painfulness is a bridle to stay us.I.7.7, 81. It is this heaviness, this laziness that the Apostle Paul and the Scriptures enjoin us to shake off as they call us to repentance, to metanoia.
For which cause the Apostle who knew right well, that the weariness of the flesh is a heavy clog to the will, strikes mightily upon this key, 'Awake you that sleep, cast of all which presses down, watch, labor, strive to go forward and to grow in knowledge.'I.7.7, 81.
Portrait of Richard Hooker
No comments:
Post a Comment