authenticated and studied this species of reason.  For myself I confess in all humility that not only have I never seen a pure reason, but it has never even been possible for me to raise my mind to the point of comprehending the signification of pure reason.  I greatly fear that some nonsense lurks within the phrase, such transcendental nonsense as belongs to ideological philosophers alone.  I know not why, but these gentlemen’s pure reason always gives me the sensation of a strong blast of moving atoms.  In fact, it is not clear; but why require clarity of philosophers and ideologists?

But let us leave these senseless words and pursue the course of our demonstrations.

What we have said of reason is quite sufficient to prevent its confusion with the faculty whose discursive form it is.  But this is not enough.  We must, by still more delicate distinctions, make any confusion between these two terms impossible.

Reason, although essentially allied to intelligence, is not, like it, primordial in man.  Thus God created man intelligent, and consequently susceptible of reason; but we do not see the word reason brought into play in Genesis, because it merely expresses a derivation from the mind or intellect.  Reason, therefore, is secondary and posterior in the genetic order.  But here to the support of this assertion we have a striking and undeniable proof; namely, that the infant is born intelligent but not reasonable.  Intellect proceeds directly from that true light which shines in every man on his entrance into the world, while reason is merely the fruit of experience.  A proof of the superiority of intelligence to reason is seen in the fact that it partakes of the immutable, and is not like the latter, liable to progress.

Thus the child is seen to be as intelligent as an adult man can be.  Let us rather say that it is in the child especially that intelligence displays its brightest rays.  Yet he is not furnished with reason.  And why not?  Because he has no experience.  Reason, therefore, is an acquired power, whose light is borrowed from experience or tradition.

Reason is proportional to the experience acquired.  Practical reason or rationality is the ration or portion of experience allotted to each person.

Reason is to the mental vision exactly what the eye is to optical vision, and just as the eye borrows its visual action from external light, so reason borrows its power of clear and correct vision from traditional experience.  The similarity is absolute.

Suppress light, and vision ceases to be possible.  Suppress revelation from intellectual objects, and reason is thenceforth blind.

Between reason and intelligence, although there be inclusion and co-essentiality in these terms, there is a great difference in the mode of cognizance; for, as St. Augustine says, intelligence is shown by simple perception, and reason by the discursive process.  Thus, while intelligence acts simply, as in knowing an intelligible truth by the light of its own intuition, reason goes toward its end progressively, from one thing known to another not yet known.