“Reason, when it is refined into logic, has something to offer but only in terms of itself and depends for its effect and use on the nature of the premise.”

"Belief and Creativity" Address in Hamburg (11 April 1980); as quoted in Moving Target https://books.google.com.mx/books?id=2SwUAAAAQBAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s (2013), Faber & Faber
Context: Reason, when it is refined into logic, has something to offer but only in terms of itself and depends for its effect and use on the nature of the premise. That useful argument as to how many angels can stand on the point of a needle would turn into nothing without the concept of angels. I took a further step into my new world. I formulated what I had felt against a mass of reasonable evidence and saw that to explain the near infinite mysteries of life by scholastic Darwinism, by the doctrine of natural selection, was like looking at a sunset and saying "Someone has struck a match". As for Freud, the reductionism of his system made me remember the refrain out of Marianna in Moated Grande — "He cometh not, she said, she said I am aweary aweary, O God that I were dead!". This was my mind, not his, and I had a right to it....
We question free will, doubt it, dismiss it, experience it. We declare our own triviality on a small speck of dirt circling a small star at the rim of one countless galaxies and ignore the heroic insolence of the declaration. We have diminished the world of God and man in a universe ablaze with all the glories that contradict that diminution.
Of man and God. We have come to it, have we not? I believe in God; and you may think to yourselves — here is a man who has left a procession and gone off by himself only to end with another gasfilled image he towns round with him at the end of the rope. You would be right of course. I suffer those varying levels or intensities of belief which are, it seems, the human condition. Despite the letters I still get from people who believe me to be still alive and who are deceived by the air of confident authority that seems to stand behind that first book, Lord of the Flies, nevertheless like everyone else I have had to rely on memories of moments, bet on what once seemed a certainty but may now be an outsider, remember in faith what I cannot recreate.

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William Golding 79
British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Lite… 1911–1993

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Vol. I, Ch. 10, as translated by R. B. Haldane
Variant translations:
Reason is feminine in nature; it can give only after it has received. Of itself alone, it has nothing but the empty forms of its operation.
As translated by Eric F. J. Payne (1958) Vol. II, p. 50
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Context: Reason is feminine in nature; it can only give after it has received. Of itself it has nothing but the empty forms of its operation. There is no absolutely pure rational knowledge except the four principles to which I have attributed metalogical truth; the principles of identity, contradiction, excluded middle, and sufficient reason of knowledge. For even the rest of logic is not absolutely pure rational knowledge. It presupposes the relations and the combinations of the spheres of concepts. But concepts in general only exist after experience of ideas of perception, and as their whole nature consists in their relation to these, it is clear that they presuppose them.

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The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), IX : Faith, Hope, and Charity
Context: Faith makes us live by showing us that life, although it is dependent upon reason, has its well spring and source of power elsewhere, in something supernatural and miraculous. Cournot the mathematician, a man of singularly well-balanced and scientifically equipped mind has said that it is this tendency towards the supernatural and miraculous that gives life, and that when it is lacking, all the speculations of reason lead to nothing but affliction of the spirit.... And in truth we wish to live.

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“If nature has offered to produce the maximum effect with minimum causes, it is in all of its laws that it had to solve this major problem.”

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in
Context: If one was sometimes led astray by trying to simplify the elements of a science, it is because one has established systems before putting together a fairly large number of facts. Some assumption, which would be very simple when one considers only a class of phenomena, requires many other assumptions if one wants to leave the narrow circle in which we had initially withdrawn. If nature has offered to produce the maximum effect with minimum causes, it is in all of its laws that it had to solve this major problem. It is without doubt difficult to discover the foundations of this wonderful economy, i. e. the simplest causes of phenomena considered from such a wide point of view. But if this general principle of the philosophy of physics does not lead immediately to the knowledge of truth, it can direct the efforts of the human spirit, by leading it away from theories which relate the phenomena to too many different causes, and by adopting preferably those based on the smallest number of assumptions, which show to be more fruitful in consequences.

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“The rule is derived inductively from experience, therefore does not have any inner necessity, is always valid only for special cases and can anytime be refuted by opposite facts. On the contrary, the law is a logical relation between conceptual constructions; it is therefore deductible from upper [übergeordnete] laws and enables the derivation of lower laws; it has as such a logical necessity in concordance with its upper premises; it is not a mere statement of probability, but has a compelling, apodictic logical value once its premises are accepted”

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Source: 1920s, Kritische Theorie der Formbildung (1928, 1933), p. 91; as cited in: M. Drack, W. Apfalter, D. Pouvreau (2007) " On the making of a system theory of life: Paul A Weiss and Ludwig von Bertalanffy's conceptual connection http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2874664/". in: Q Rev Biol. 2007 December; 82(4): 349–373.

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“Spirit, on the contrary, may be defined as that which has its center in itself. It has not a unity outside itself, but has already found it; it exists in and with itself. Matter has its essence out of itself; Spirit is self-contained existence (Bei-sich-selbst-seyn). Now this is Freedom, exactly. For if I am dependent, my being is referred to something else which I am not; I cannot exist independently of something external. I am free, on the contrary, when my existence depends upon myself. This self-contained existence of Spirit is none other than self-consciousness consciousness of one's own being. Two things must be distinguished in consciousness; first, the fact that I know; secondly, what I know. In self-consciousness these are merged in one; for Spirit knows itself. It involves an appreciation of its own nature, as also an energy enabling it to realise itself; to make itself actually that which it is potentially.”

Lectures on the History of History Vol 1 p. 18 John Sibree translation (1857), 1914
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As quoted in Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm (2009), "Linnaeus and homo religiosus," Universitet, p. 83.

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