The philosophic skeptic, it would appear, has logically overreached himself--a very usual consummation. There is little sign that any of the religious skeptics above named ever made any converts to religion; and there is much 'reason' to think that they turned many to unbelief. Mr. Balfour from time to time speaks of 'reasonable people' and of 'absurdity.' But he leaves us in the dark as to what absurdity means, and his thesis excludes from the 'reasonable' class alike all religious persons and all scientific persons, unless, possibly, mathematicians as such. Since there is no 'reasonable assurance' for the belief that the sun will rise to-morrow, and politicians have no ground in reason for anything they say as such, the mass of the ordinary beliefs of educated mankind are not reasonable or rational; and since we have no 'reason' for believing in either mortality or immortality, we can have no reason for believing (whether we do or not) in Mr. Balfour, who avowedly believes in both without reason. His book, by implication, is not an appeal to reason, is not a process of reasoning, and can give no 'reasonable assurance' of anything, positive or negative, to anybody. All this by his own showing. The rationalist, it should seem, has small cause to deprecate such antagonism. He could hardly have a more comprehensive clearing of the field of dialectic for the formulation of his own conception of reason and reasoning, and his own appeal to the reason of reasonable people. As thus:-- 1. _Reason_ is our name for (_a_) the sum of all the judging processes; (_b_) the act of reflex judgment; (_c_) 'private judgment' as against obedience to authority; and (_d_) the state of sanity contrasted with that of insanity; and '_a_ reason' is a fact or motive or surmise which we judge sufficient to induce us or others to believe or do (or doubt or not do) something without much or any danger of error, failure, or injury. 2. _Reasoning_ is our name for the process of comparing or stating 'reasons why' certain propositions or judgments should be believed or disbelieved, or certain acts done or not done. 3. We are emphatically 'in the sphere of Reason' when we are reflecting and reasoning, as distinct from merely feeling, sensating, desiring, or hating; but even the feelings are, as it were, part of the stuff of Reason. Strictly speaking, we are in the sphere of Reason even when we believe what we are told to believe on matters outside the knowledge of our instructors (in so far as we credit them with greater wisdom than our own), or try to believe that what we would like to be true must be true because we would like it (inasmuch as we are proceeding reflectively on a 'reason why'); though in these cases we are reasoning fallaciously--that is, in a way which can lead to manifold error and injury.