nalist, we assume, professes after all
to stand or fall by reasoning. That is to say, he claims to hold his
supernaturalist positions in logical and moral consistency with his
historical positions, his practice as a judge or juror, as a man of
science, as a critic in politics, as a man of honour, as a player of
cricket by the rules of the game. As a matter of fact, however, he at
times goes about the task by way of an undertaking to show, not that his
beliefs are well founded in reason, but that no beliefs are; and that
his beliefs are therefore at least as valid as any one else's. All the
while he is ostensibly appealing to reason, to judgment. That position
in turn must be considered.

Sec. 5. THE SKEPTICAL RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE

The philosophic issue under this head has been usefully cleared for
English readers by Mr. A. J. Balfour in his _Defence of Philosophic
Doubt_; and, in another sense, very usefully for rationalists by the
same writer in his work _The Foundations of Belief_. The gist of the
former treatise is an expansion of the proposition of Hume that all
moral judgments, on analysis, are found to root in a sentiment or bias.
In particular, Mr. Balfour argues that all scientific beliefs so-called,
however immediately proved, rest upon general beliefs which are
'incapable of proof.' It is noteworthy that never through the whole
treatise does Mr. Balfour analyse the concept of 'proof,' though his
main aim is ostensibly to discriminate between proved and unproved
propositions. It may be worth while, then, at this stage, to note the
risks of intellectual confusion in connection with the term proof. The
common conception, implicit in Mr. Balfour's argument, is that
concerning a 'proved' thing either we have, or men of science say we
have, a right of certainty, as it were, which we cannot have concerning
anything not proved or not capable of proof. The simple fact is that the
very idea of proof involves that of uncertainty you seek to prove that
which is not unquestionable. To prove is to _probe_,[8] to test. The
idea of 'demonstration,' which seems commonly to connote special
certainty, carries us no further. It means a 'showing,' a 'letting you
see with your own eyes.' In geometry, it stands for a chain of reasoning
in which every step rests upon previous steps which ultimately rest upon
axioms and definitions agreed upon. There the process is one of
analysis--a showing that a proposition formerly unknown