CWTVKS Volume 2

Rationalism

[Notes given to the editor.]

Rationalism as a religion of the modern world—has it been so far a success or a failure? Is it Russellean rationalism?

It all depends upon what we mean precisely by the term Rationalism. If you mean by that that Reason is the ultimate authority in the sphere of religion or spiritual life and that it is the foundation of certainty in knowledge, then the age of this ‘ism’ has almost gone so far as eminent thinkers and pioneers of thought are concerned, and perhaps has survived and is surviving in the uncreative and barren soil of a very limited circle of what is called the fashionable society of narrow-minded people. But if you mean by ‘rational’ to be sensible in giving a reasoned exposition of uncommon subjects say like those coming under the category of religions and extraordinary and ultra-human experiences, then certainly it is laudable and remains a necessity, even for those who lead a genuine religious life and not only for an efficient handling of human problems in worldly life.

If you believe in the principle of evolution, then you can see that the rational man has had at some stage of the Earth's evolution an infra-rational stage; these infra-rational brute elements, animal instincts, though not always dominant, are to be found in the rational man, as a heritage of the past. Similarly when the rational being in the course of evolution gets at a suprarational state, the ‘rational’ element can as well remain, only as subordinate to the ‘supra-rational’ (which is certainly not irrational) even as the infra-rational is retained now, by the rational being, subordinating it to the possible extent to moral force and mental control.

(What are passions, anger, lust etc. if not infra-rational native to the animal?)

24 February 1935