Hume, it will be observed, is not here bent on vindicating the rational character of direct inference from observation: he had set out in the text by disparaging customary thinking as non-rational; and he is now claiming for the 'reasoning' man that experience goes a long way to generate his reasoning processes. 'The truth is,' he says in his final paragraph, 'an inexperienced reasoner could be no reasoner at all, were he absolutely inexperienced.' It is a fragmentary note to a hasty passage; but at least it concedes that reasoning _is_ largely a matter of inference from experience, and thus decisively gainsays the assertion in the text that no inference from experience is an 'effect of reasoning,' inasmuch as it says such inference is reasoning; that reasoning is a working of the mind on the facts of life; and that the common distinction between reasoning and [beliefs derived direct from] experience 'is at bottom erroneous, or at least superficial.'[12] If, he says in the fourth paragraph of the Note, 'If we examine those _arguments_ which, in any of the sciences above mentioned, are supposed to be the _mere_ effects of reasoning and reflection, they will be found to _terminate_ at last in some general principle or conclusion for which we can assign no _reason_ but observation and experience.' If an argument be not a process of reasoning, neither word is intelligible. If an argument terminates (=has one end) in a conclusion founded on observation, and if that observation be a 'reason' for a proposition, then arguing is reasoning. If not, what is Mr. Balfour's book? By his own definition, _that_ is 'outside the sphere of Reason,' inasmuch as it is a series of negative propositions which, like their denied contraries, must be 'incapable of proof.' What term, then, would he apply to his argument, if he admits that he is arguing?