REASONABLENESS AND UNREASONABLENESS: Now you men of reason, whose moderation becomes you in such an extreme age, I have read something to the effect that man is not a reasonable creature but only capable of reason - a remark which didn't greatly impress me when I first came across it but, nonetheless, one which has since caused me to speculate more thoroughly on the nature and extent of human reason and, if you'll forgive my saying so, to draw conclusions remarkably similar to those elicited by Jonathan Swift.

Indeed, it was a great blow to my ego to suddenly find myself confronted by such an apparently stark interpretation of human life, all the more so since I had previously been assured by an author who happens to be humanist that man is a rational creature.

Yes, a great blow indeed, but one from which I have since recovered, if you reasonable men will again forgive my saying so, to return to life with renewed zest!

Ah, what a liberation to know that man is not a reasonable creature but, as the aforementioned satirist rightly contended, only capable of reason!

And do you know why he is not a reasonable creature, you reasonable men? Yes, of course you do! For you are reasonable men, not ignorant, uncouth, bigoted, narrow-minded, bad-tempered, obsessed, or extreme men, and consequently you know as well as I do that reasonableness has to be paid for with the coin of intermittent unreasonableness!

Yes, you know that well enough, and that is why you are reasonable and not fantastic, like the 'preachers of reason'. They would condemn your periodic unreasonableness as a failing, a crime, sin, weakness, etc., over which you have total control but against which you refuse to struggle. Like all other lopsided creatures, the 'preachers of reason' have little respect for your integrity as men, since they do not see man in the whole but only in the part, and that, you reasonable men, is their chief unreasonableness. Instead of leading to an acceptance and understanding of man, it inevitably leads to a condemnation and belittling of him.

So beware, you reasonable men, the insidious calumny of the 'preachers of reason'! See to it that you do not become like them; for they are not even idealists, these lopsided creatures, but misguided realists of a pernicious disposition!

And beware, too, you reasonable men, the unreasonable cynics of whose tribe Jonathan Swift was certainly not a member. For they are as great a danger to your metaphysical integrity as the 'preachers of reason', and will do whatever they can to undermine your complacency and drag you down to the murky depths of their despair. These men will not help you to understand yourselves, you reasonable men, and neither will they do much to help you improve your self-image. Those who preach that man should always be reasonable are usually deluded types. But these 'preachers of unreason' are mostly a low breed, and therefore should be avoided.

One doesn't become a higher man, you reasonable men, by mixing with the low, so see to it that your reason doesn't desert you when it is most needed!

See to it, too, that, for the sake of your reasonableness, you don't forget how to be periodically - unreasonable!