_S._ Indeed, it is easy to dogmatize without definitions, and to repeat broad assertions without understanding them. Nothing is so convenient as to begin with gravely assuming our own infallibility, and we can then utter nothing but oracles, of course. _R._ What is it _you_ understand by Reason? _S._ It is your business to answer the question; but still, if you choose, I will take the _onus_ upon myself, and interpret for you. _R._ I have no objection, if you do it fairly. _S._ You shall yourself be judge. Reason, with most people, means their own opinion; and I do not find your friends a particular exception to the rule. Their dogmatical tone, their arrogance, their supercilious treatment of the pretensions of others, their vulgar conceit and satisfaction in their own peculiar tenets, so far from convincing me that they are right, convince me that they must be wrong (except by accident, or by mechanically parroting others); for no one ever thought for himself, or looked attentively at truth and nature, that did not feel his own insufficiency and the difficulty and delicacy of his task. Self-knowledge is the first step to wisdom. The _Rational Dissenters_ (who took this title as a characteristic distinction, and who professed an entire superiority over prejudice and superstition of all sorts,) were as little disposed to have their opinions called in question as any people I ever knew. One of their preachers thanked God publicly for having given them a _liberal religion_. So your School thank God in their hearts for having given them a _liberal philosophy_: though what with them passes for liberal is considered by the rest of the world as very much akin to illiberality. _R._ May I beseech you to come to the point at once? _S._ We shall be there soon enough, without hurrying. Reason, I conceive, in the sense that you would appeal to it, may signify any one of three things, all of them insufficient as tests and standards of moral sentiment, or (if that word displeases) of moral conduct:—1. Abstract truth, as distinct from local impressions or individual partialities; 2. Calm, inflexible self-will, as distinct from passion; 3. Dry matter of fact or reality, as distinct from sentimentality or poetry. _R._ Let me hear your objections; but do for once adhere to the track you have chalked out. _S._ ‘Thereafter as it happens.’ You may drag your grating go-cart of crude assumptions and heavy paralogisms along your narrow iron rail-way, if you please: but let me diverge down ‘primrose paths,’ or break my neck over precipices, as I think proper. _R._ Take your own course. _A wilful man must have his way._ You demur, if I apprehend you right, to founding moral rectitude on the mere dictates of the Understanding. This I grant to be the grand _arcanum_ of the doctrine of Utility. I desire to know what other foundation for morals you will find so solid?