Ep 16 | The Way of the Reason (Principles #18-19)
Never in my reading life have I found a chapter in a book that mentions such a range of characters. In Chapter IX of Volume Six, Mason manages to pull together Florence Nightingale, Euclid, Pythagoras, Satan, William Shakespeare and Karl Marx in her exploration of the Way of Reason.
What point does she make? Reason is a yes man who will try to confirm any idea accepted by the Will.
Which is how we get Florence, Shakespeare, Marx, and your children all thinking their own thoughts right.
Video Resource | Let’s get practical.
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Principles “18-19: The way of reason: We teach children, too, not to 'lean (too confidently) to their own understanding'; because the function of reason is to give logical demonstration (a) of mathematical truth, (b) of an initial idea, accepted by the will. In the former case, reason is, practically, an infallible guide, but in the latter, it is not always a safe one; for, whether that idea be right or wrong, reason will confirm it by irrefragable proofs.
Therefore, children should be taught, as they become mature enough to understand such teaching, that the chief responsibility which rests on them as persons is the acceptance or rejection of ideas. To help them in this choice we give them principles of conduct, and a wide range of the knowledge fitted to them. These principles should save children from some of the loose thinking and heedless action which cause most of us to live at a lower level than we need.
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Let’s start with the easiest part of reason, shall we? Mathematics. One of the functions of reason is to give logical demonstration of mathematical truths, and that makes sense, right? We’re all good here.
2+2=4 and all that.
It’s that second one that’s probably new for most of us. So, let’s hear it again: the function of reason is to give logical demonstration of an initial idea, accepted by the will.
If you didn’t listen to the last episode about the way of the will, I highly recommend you do that before listening to today’s episode. The reason, in its proper place, is a servant to support the will and the will’s job is to accept or reject ideas. So understanding the will is kind of important.
If we were drinking coffee or bourbon together, I’d want to bring in a few things to Mason’s chapter on the reason: namely, consideration of things like emotion and impulse. When looking at a whole person, it’s not as clear cut as will and reason and nothing else.
But for today, and for the principles of education, Mason is specifically exploring the two guides in the moral and intellectual growth of children. So I’m going to stick there too because I do think she’s right in that if a mother-teacher can help support the will and the reason of a child, they will grow in moral and intellectual virtue which will create a flourishing life as God defines it and isn’t that what we all want for our kids?
So, reason.
It’s a yes man, a hype girl, a “you’re so right” cheerleader. And this is exactly why a child must learn not to be too dependent on their own reason because reason will always try to find a way to confirm your rightness.
It will override the counter-pleadings of obedience and our kids have to know this is going to happen to them too.
Actually, I love the way Mason says it.
She says, “That whenever they want to do wrong capital reasons for doing the wrong thing will occur to them.”
But the good news, is that when they want to do good, it’s just as easy for reason to confirm their rightness too.
Now, if you’ll remember back a couple of episodes with me, part of this learning the way of the will and the reason is learning to control one’s thoughts. Reason can’t begin saying yes until an idea has already settled itself firmly in the mind of a child. So learning to redirect one’s mind, in order to give time for the will to ready itself for choosing rightly, is the pressing tool to add to your and your child’s toolbox.
Let’s take a familiar story we all know to see exactly how this plays out:
Eve. Have you heard of her? I’m just kidding.
Okay, so we have the introduction of an idea from the serpent. He says, “For god knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
At this point, Eve’s will should have rejected the idea as disobedient to God. To believe God a liar, to choose to do other than he had said? No. Hard pass. Can’t do that.
But instead, she considers it. She does not redirect her thoughts to something else but instead lets them sit upon the fruit, which, now that you mention it, does look good. Even pleasant. Actually, being wise does sound pretty nice. Then we could be like God and being like God is good because God is good and yes, okay, I’m clearly now adding to the words of scripture but that’s how the failure of the will allows for the train of reason to start running. Before you know it, this is an obviously, reasonable, right decision. Let’s do it.
That’s the danger of the reason when the will fails to reject wrong ideas.
But reason isn’t the bad guy. In fact, reason also isn’t to blame for things like sin. There’s not a place for “Oh well, my mind just ran away there and woops, sin.” Or, as one my children has been saying to me recently when they are disobedient, “I wasn’t disobeying. I just got mixed up about it.”
No, no. Reason isn’t to blame for sin because, as we now know, we were responsible for rejecting the original idea.
But this is not all doom and gloom. Reason is actually a great gift, a wonderful servant. Great intellectual advances and discoveries and world-shaping events of good show the power and need for reason. Reason just needs to stay in its right place.
We live in a post-Enlightenment world. I know, I kind of rag on this a lot. My husband likes to remind me that, without the direct effects of such a change in the world, if I could transport myself back to a point at which I could be a pre-modern woman in a world where people were postured as learners and encounter-ers instead of masters and manipulators, I would not, most like, be gazing at the wonders of the cosmos from my manor house on my estate, but rather would be a poor peasant who didn’t have any books.
Ooof, terrible.
But my pinch-point with the Enlightenment is that it crowned reason as king, giving it full ruling power and wounding people in the process. Just like we don’t want our children ruled by appetite, ambition, or love of convenience, we don’t want them ruled by reason because reason is dangerously fallible.
If a child wants something, any mother can tell you how impossible it is to out-reason them about it. You’ll never convince them through logic that they’re wrong in their reasoning; you might be able to change their acceptance of the original idea or redirect their thoughts entirely, but you can’t out-reason them purely against their own reason.
I actually think this principle is a helpful key to some of the more frustrating parts of motherhood in the early years. How often do we try to show our children the logical thought process in our discipline and teaching in the home? How often do we watch them go and act unreasonably and illogically again? I’ve felt before like all I did was gently explain with logic with no obvious results. I was missing the beginning domino, the idea at work, the idea that had been accepted.
But I’ve learned two helpful questions that have helped far more than any rational, logical explanation ever has in my house.
What did you think would happen when you did that?
How did you think of that?
The first—the what did you think would happen one—helps a child connect back to their original idea. This is especially helpful in teaching after disobedience. A child can usually answer this easily: I wanted to hurt my sibling because I was mad. I thought I could eat that snack without you seeing me. I wanted him to give me back my toy. This helps uncover what idea came in through the will’s gate, which is helpful for the child, yes, but also really helpful for you as the mom. The behavior may have been a smack on a sibling’s back, but now you know that this child accepted the idea to hurt a sibling for a reason, whether out of hurt, anger, or what have you. You could just focus on the smack, or you could help a child see how they believed a lie, calling it right.
That’s how you get to the heart of an issue and that’s how you connect to this to the Kingdom of Mansoul.
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Oh there’s that Mansoul again. Did you catch it last time? It’s Mason’s name for man’s soul, and in every idea we accept or reject, we’re really asking, “Does this protect or hurt Mansoul?” But anyway, just interrupting myself to invite you over to Patreon to hear today’s bonus five where we’re talking about neuroscience. Yes, I dabble in neuroscience insomuch as it helps me to understand the design and development of my young kids. We’d love to have you nerd with us at patreon.com/thecommonplace
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The second—how did you think of that?—can be used for anything. How did you think of that lego world creation? How did you think of that game? How did you think of that very cool but dangerous thing you built in the backyard? A child will begin to see how ideas just appear in his mind, and how the reasons for it follow quickly and effortlessly until, boom, it was done.
So, naturally, as you are a good student of Mason and have already listened to the other episodes in this season, your mind is already connecting to how a child must learn to reason by spending much time on living ideas.
By offering an education and a way of mothering that allow a child to reason out problems of life in story or history, math facts and logical fallacies, they’ll learn to trace the connection between ideas accepted and rejected and the reason that confirms it. A child needs a lot of practice with really good material to do this. And once they’ve practiced and they’re aware that they mustn’t depend too much on their own reason, they’ll be better able to spot bad reasoning.
And part of this practice is formally learning to follow arguments and detect fallacies. Children should be taught logic and equipped to hear someone’s reasoning. It’s actual madness to let children face a debatable world without any preparation. I mean, have you been on social media since the year of our Lord 2020?
Side note: if your kids are older, one fun thing to do is to play “spot the logical fallacy” while watching any presidential debate. It’s funny, yes, and also very sad. But, for this purpose, it’s excellent for finding fallacies.
Now, as we start to end here, I want to leave you with a few guiding principles to start incorporating into your conversations with your children. We’re not going to be able to touch on every wrong idea that comes their way but we can help them learn to discern for themselves by remember a few things:
I want, am made for, and must have a God. So the ideas I accept must honor him.
Does this idea make my life worth living? Does it protect Mansoul?
My reason is fallible, so I must always try to be honest with myself and reassess my thoughts.
These are not small ideas but they are ideas our children need to grow into, that we are still probably growing into. Accepting and rejecting ideas is the chief responsibility of persons because it’s tied up in obedience which is the only path of life and joy. But the way of the will and the reason are not something mysterious and unattainable. We give our children a wide range of knowledge, a feast of the very best of ideas, and we hold them to principles of conduct that reflect the King they serve, and, with a whole lot of prayer and love, we continue to point to truth, goodness, and beauty. And we do it again and again and again.
I’ll see you guys in two weeks.
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