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Chapter XIIThe Office and Limitationsof the ReasonIF THE reason is not the sovereign master of our being noreven intended to be more than an intermediary or minister,it cannot succeed in giving a perfect law to the other estatesof the realm, although it may impose on them a temporaryand imperfect order as a passage to a higher perfection. Therational or intellectual man is not the last and highest ideal ofmanhood, nor would a rational society be the last and highestexpression of the possibilities of an aggregate human life, —unless indeed we give to this word, reason, a wider meaningthan it now possesses and include in it the combined wisdomof all our powers of knowledge, those which stand below andabove the understanding and logical mind as well as this strictlyrational part of our nature. The Spirit that manifests itself inman and dominates secretly the phases of his development, isgreater and profounder than his intellect and drives towards aperfection that cannot be shut in by the arbitrary constructionsof the human reason.Meanwhile, the intellect performs its function; it leads manto the gates of a greater self-consciousness and places him withunbandaged eyes on that wide threshold where a more luminousAngel has to take him by the hand. It takes first the lower powersof his existence, each absorbed in its own urge, each strivingwith a blind self-sufficiency towards the fulfilment of its owninstincts and primary impulses; it teaches them to understandthemselves and to look through the reflecting eyes of the intelligenceon the laws of their own action. It enables them todiscern intelligently the high in themselves from the low, thepure from the impure and out of a crude confusion to arrive atmore and more luminous formulas of their possibilities. It gives