Time & Perspective Quote by F. L. Lucas

Lucas plants his flag in a particularly unfashionable place: reason, not as sterile logic-chopping, but as a moral muscle that has to be exercised under pressure. The line is built around a deliberate reversal. He doesn’t plead for more feeling or more faith to rescue the future; he warns against the very human impulse to treat reason as the culprit when the world becomes frightening. “Panic flight” is the tell. It’s not a calm philosophical disagreement with rationalism. It’s the stampede into comforting myth, ideological certainty, or tribal belonging when complexity starts to hurt.

As a critic writing in the long shadow of the early 20th century, Lucas is implicitly arguing with the era’s seductive irrationalisms: propaganda that turned crowds into instruments, romantic nationalism that dressed violence as destiny, and the temptation to blame “cold reason” for wars that were, in fact, fueled by emotion, grievance, and power. His phrasing also suggests that reason is not self-justifying; it needs “wiser and braver” use. Wisdom implies humility: reason that knows its limits, tests itself, corrects itself. Bravery implies cost: thinking clearly can mean standing apart from the crowd, refusing the easy story, enduring ambiguity without reaching for a scapegoat.

The subtext is a rebuke to intellectual surrender. When societies stop arguing in good faith, facts become negotiable, and the future gets handed to whoever can provide the most soothing narrative. Lucas insists the antidote isn’t less rationality, but better character in the way we practice it.