SECT.  LVII.  Reason in Man is Independent of and above Him.

I have already evinced that the inward and universal master, at all times, and in all places, speaks the same truths.  We are not that master: though it is true we often speak without, and higher than him.  But then we mistake, stutter, and do not so much as understand ourselves.  We are even afraid of being made sensible of our mistakes, and we shut up our ears, lest we should be humbled by his corrections.  Certainly the man who is apprehensive of being corrected and reproved by that uncorruptible reason, and ever goes astray when he does not follow it, is not that perfect, universal, and immutable reason, that corrects him, in spite of himself.  In all things we find, as it were, two principles within us.  The one gives, the other receives; the one fails, or is defective; the other makes up; the one mistakes, the other rectifies; the one goes awry, through his inclination, the other sets him right.  It was the mistaken and ill-understood experience of this that led the Marcionites and Manicheans into error.  Every man is conscious within himself of a limited and inferior reason, that goes astray and errs, as soon as it gets loose from an entire subordination, and which mends its error no other way, but by returning under the yoke of another superior, universal, and immutable reason.  Thus everything within us argues an inferior, limited, communicated, and borrowed reason, that wants every moment to be rectified by another.  All men are rational by means of the same reason, that communicates itself to them, according to various degrees.  There is a certain number of wise men; but the wisdom from which they draw theirs, as from an inexhaustible source, and which makes them what they are, is but ONE.