David Hume:
"We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of
the combat of passion and of reason. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave
of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and
obey them."
मर्ढेकरांची माझी तोंडपाठ असलेली कविता म्हणजे प्रार्थना : "भंगु दे काठिन्य माझें..." (पृष्ठ ७२, 'मर्ढेकरांची कविता', १९७७)त्यातील एक ओळ: "भावनेला येउं दे गा / शास्त्र-काट्याची कसोटी."....
आजवर लक्षात न आलेले मला अलीकडे लक्षात आले, भावनेला शास्त्र-काट्याची कसोटी लागणार नाही! कधीच!
बर्ट्रान्ड रसेल यांच्या 'स्केप्टिकल एसेज', १९२८ या पुस्तकाला नवीन प्रस्तावना लिहताना जॉन ग्रे म्हणतात:
“...In his letter commenting on (Bertrand) Russell’s book on
China, (Joseph) Conrad wrote: ‘I have never been able to find in any man’s book
or any man’s talk anything convincing enough to stand up for a moment against
my deep-seated sense of fatality governing this man-inhabited world.’ Russell’s
passionate admiration for Conrad may have had a number of sources. One of them
was surely his suspicion that Conrad’s sceptical fatalism was a truer account
of human life than his own troubled belief in reason and science. As reformer,
he believed reason could save the world. As a skeptical follower of Hume he
knew reason could never be more than the slave of the passions. Sceptical
Essays was written as a defence of rational doubt. Today we can read it as a
confession of faith, the testament of a crusading rationalist who doubted the
power of reason...”
महत्वाचे शब्द < reason could never be more than the slave of the passions>.... शास्त्र-काट्याला येउं दे गा / भावनांची कसोटी ... ही मानवी जीवनाची अवस्था आहे.
फार व्याकूळ करून टाकणारी प्रार्थना, मर्ढेकरांच्या या एका विचारामुळे थोडी हडबडते.
Reason (Central figure of Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière on the hill in Lyon.)
सौजन्य : wikiquote