This settled, and for the better understanding of the meaning attached
to this proposition, let us call to our aid the powers of analogy.
If reason arises from the failure of intellect it is doubtless to
rectify the valuations of the ego. Now the _compass_, which is in itself
very inferior to the hand which fashions it and appropriates it to its
own use, nevertheless implies a defect in that hand which directs it. So
there is between the eye and the telescope, which comes to its aid, all
the distance that divides the faculty from the instrument which it
governs. Still the telescope joined to the eye communicates to it a
great power of vision; but the instrument arises from the failure of
the eye, which is nevertheless infinitely superior to it; for it is the
eye which sees, and not the telescope.
It is thus that we must understand the relations of reason and
intellect. Let us say, then, that the reason is to the intellect exactly
what the telescope is to the eye. This established, we can formulate the
following definition as well founded.
The intellect is the spiritual eye whose mysterious telescope reason
forms, or: reason is a necessary appendage of mental optics, or again:
reason is the glass used by the eye of a defective intellect.
But this is not all. St. Thomas provides us still elsewhere with the
means of making our analogy more striking. He says, indeed: reason is
given us to make clear that which is not evident.
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