THE contrast between “heart” and “reason” is one of the most frequent commonplaces of everyday life; and even the careful thinker may take it over, though the terms in which it is expressed are clearly erroneous or at least such as easily lead to error. For if by “reason” we mean thought (which can only be “truth”) and by “heart,” sentiment or will, no real opposition can exist. A conflict between a prerequisite and the thing it determines, between the light of truth and the warmth, the fever of action which that light engenders, is unthinkable. But to go further into this criticism might seem to be verbal hair-splitting: in the present case “reason” can mean nothing but “rational will” or “will for the good,” and “heart,” likewise, volition that tends toward the good. So the conflict, if conflict there be, can arise only between two wills, two goods, two “hearts.” For that matter, even in the terms of the common phrase itself, the conflict seems to be announced only to be adjusted; for the prestige and the demands of what is included in the word “reason” are so majestic that we cannot concede victory to anything else. The “reason” in question is a larger and deeper “heart,” which includes and subordinates the lesser and less noble heart; and any attempt on the part of the lesser to assert itself against the greater is condemned by our conscience either as we are about to permit the attempt, or shortly after we have permitted it. Our minds tell us that things, in a given situation, stand so and so, and reason (which, in this case, is the will for the true) keeps them that way in our consciences; but the situation is too painful to our “hearts” (to our contingent needs of the moment); so we try to obscure that truth with all the illusions which the little and lower heart suggests to the fancy, and which the bigger and higher heart refutes by thought.

Here is a child to whom you are devoted. A long series of observations and experiments has convinced you that his tendencies are such that he must be subjected to severe discipline, brought face to face with privations, denied demonstrations of your affection, committed, let us even say, to a correctional institution. But your love as a parent quibbles with these obvious convictions; you grasp at the slightest wisp of evidence that seems to prove them wrong; you build up a wholly imaginary situation, soothing to your “heart” but in conflict with your “reason.” All along, meantime, you feel restless, uneasy, remorseful. You realise that a lower emotion is causing you to close your eyes to a truth which a higher concept of your child’s welfare bids you sternly look in the face. In harbouring an inclination to let the lower impulse triumph over the higher conviction, even though that lower impulse, taken by itself or in circumstances different from those before you, be a thoroughly noble one, you yield to your “heart,” which is your individual heart and impersonates your tenderer yearnings and, after all, your selfishness. It is not even necessary for you to refuse to see the unwelcome truth in order to act against the loftier resolution which that truth has inspired in you. Giambattista Vico, besides being a great philosopher, was also a devoted father. Having brought himself to the unwelcome conclusion that his incorrigible son should be punished, he summoned the police to take the boy to prison. But then, carried away by his “heart,” he warned the boy of the danger and urged him to make his escape. In such cases as this, we more openly give the victory to the “little heart” at the expense of the “big heart,” to the individual at the expense of society and humanity.

From what has just been said it is easy to understand why people who sin by letting “heart” dictate to “reason” are viewed with an indulgence mixed with sympathy, or even with actual admiration and respect. The “heart” they have shown, considered by itself, or as a general tendency of character, is a good heart, by no means selfish intrinsically. Only incidentally has it become selfish by reason of the conflict with the other “heart.” And the selfishness it manifests belongs to that less repugnant kind which we specify as “weakness.” In reproving such people, we reflect that we, their self-appointed judges, would probably not have done differently in like circumstances; and on that account, forgiveness bursts all the more hot and abundant from our souls. Besides, their shortcoming bears witness to valuable human qualities, which under different conditions have produced and will produce works that are beautiful and good.

More interesting to analyse is the feeling that arises, in the opposite case, toward people who have resisted the appeal of “heart” and adhere to “reason.” Very rarely is it one of admiration, though when we do come to admire, our admiration reaches the exalted form which we designate as veneration. More often we feel something between coldness and diffidence. And why should this be? Why should reason fail to engage our sympathies? Why do we warm toward Giambattista Vico, bent on saving his scapegrace son, while we stand unmoved before the stern and uncompromising Emmanuel Kant, who, at least as we are made to think of him, was a man in full and coherent accord with himself in his theories of duty and in his observance of duty?

Kant, however, was a discerning moralist and pointed to the solution of this puzzle in his distinction between actions performed out of a sense of obligation and actions springing from a deeper moral consciousness. The higher will for the good, “reason,” that is, may easily develop into a system of abstract maxims and rules for right living, and so become more or less mechanical in a sort of second nature to a man. In this case the man is quite sure of himself and goes his own way unswervingly, literally compelling society to esteem him as just and perhaps so esteeming himself. But a certain amount of aversion is suffused through this public approval, corresponding to a vague uneasiness in the mind of the man himself, a besetting fear lest that inflexible morality of his may have been touched with a trace of selfishness, lest the “reason” have become “ratio” in the less agreeable of this word’s two meanings.

“Ratio,” on the one hand, denotes logical and ethical consistency; but it also denotes mathematical or arithmetical coherency—calculation. Forcellini, in fact, thus defines it: ratio duo praesertim significat, nempe facultatem animae qua unum ab alio deducimus ac disserimus; et actum supputandi sive calculum.

Now if reason is really to vanquish the heart, it must itself be, as we said at the beginning, a “bigger” heart and therefore capable of experiencing the very feelings it is forced to punish or restrain. These it must integrate and synthesise in a new feeling, a new act of will, and the process is not something cold and mechanical but partakes of all the warmth and turbulence of life. Against a rationalising and abstract habit of virtue which often misses the mark, the “heart” rises in protest; for the heart, as if by natural endowment, has a living experience of humanity and of the good, whereas the corresponding experience of habit is a dead and artificial thing fitted together piece by piece with the sutures offensively visible to the perception. There are people who observe in themselves a lack of any great amount of spontaneous generosity; and they suffer keenly from this want. But at the same time, we cannot always rely on people of so-called generous instincts; for these easily go astray, following caprice and momentary whims. Over men of “reason,” of “cold reason,” which is the same as decorous selfishness, moral preference must be given to men of “heart,” however imperfect these may be. But to men of “heart” we must prefer men of “big hearts.” The situation is quite analogous to that prevailing in the sphere of aesthetics. To the artist whose forms are cold and correct we prefer the artist who is undisciplined but rich in sentiment; for if the latter has not attained true art, he at least has the living germ thereof, while the former has only its dead exteriors. But greater than both of these is the artistic genius who gives perfect form to the feeling within him, so that nothing in his work remains unexpressed, nothing is left inanimate.

“Cold reason,” to add one concluding remark, is originally responsible for the apparent conflict between theory and practice. For in “reason,” in the sense we are here considering, the will is still weak if it has begun to function at all, and is hardly to be distinguished from the abstract maxims and principles of conduct present to the intellect. At any rate it has as yet left the heart (the passions) inert, or virtually so. The light has not yet been transformed into heat; and in connection with the difficult process of that transformation, a conflict does arise, but wholly within the will itself. In this conflict it sometimes happens that the lower and stronger impulse derides and scorns the higher and weaker; so that the latter is rendered powerless, or even completely routed and subdued.