William Whewell's Moral Philosophy

In the preceding remarks, I have said that Reason in its highest sense may be fitly described as an Image of the Divine Mind. This is an expression which has often been used by the philosophers who have assigned the most important office to Reason in the apprehension of moral, religious and spiritual truth. But I am not aware that such philosophers have undertaken to describe the relation of the Image to the Original Reality otherwise than in the broadest and most general terms. In the speculations which I have had to pursue respecting the progress of scientific discovery, I have found myself led to attempt to give a more precise and definite account of this relation; and though all attempts at definiteness on such a subject, must be vastly imperfect and scanty, it still appeared to me that we might justifiably proceed somewhat beyond the more general and abstract expressions in which the truth has hitherto been conveyed. I nthe work which I have published On the Philosophy of Discovery, there is a Chapter (Chapter xxx.) entitled The Theological Bearing of the Philosophy of Discovery, which contains the views which result from teh history of human thought. And by compassing the aspect of man as a moral and as a speculative creature, I am led (Chapter xxxiii.) to the aphorisms, that

Man's Intellectual Progress consists in the Idealization of Facts, and that man's Moral Progress consists in the Realization of Ideas: and further, that

All the progress made by man, both in the Idealization of Facts and in the Realization of Ideas, is, and always will be, exceedingly scanty and incomplete.

And thus though by both these kinds of progress, man is constantly led and drawn towards the Divine Nature, he must always remain at an immeasurable distance below the Divine Reality. The Human Reason, however truly it may be termed an Image of the Divine Mind, must always be an Image immeasurably imperfect, dim and limited, when compared with teh Divine Light and Fulness: this we see even by the light of Reason itself. This is true of the scientific Reason, the Mind of man, which deals with speculative relations, some of which we are capable of seeing with intuitive clearness. Still more is this true of that moral Reason which we ascribe to the Soul of man. These aspects of the Reason, the Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, are emanations and beams of the Divine Light; they can lead us but a little way towards the Divine Light; and in the chasm of darkness which intervenes between these emanations and their source, we have abundant need and abundant room for any helps which may be presented to the mind and soul in such a way that Reason may rather take the name of Faith.