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we assert that it is going to rain because the barometer is falling, we are, it is evident, drawing an inference or a conclusion from certain data. All judgments derived in this way by a process of inference from other judgments may be marked off as reasoned judgments.

It is to be remarked that there is much the same relation between judgment and inference or reasoning as we found to hold between conception and judgment. Our first judgments are 'intuitive,' the element of inference present being implicit only, and not distinctly realised in thought. When intelligence develops, and thought grows more explicit, the differentiation of intuitive and reasoned judgment becomes clearer. As we shall see presently, our judgments, so far as inferential, are consciously derived from, or based upon, other judgments. On the other hand, all judgments thus reached by a conscious process of reasoning are capable of becoming starting-points or premises in further processes of reasoning.

§ 15. The Mental Processes in Reasoning. To reason is, as we have seen, to pass from a certain judgment or certain judgments to a new one. This implies an intellectual movement, a progressive transition from one piece of knowledge to another. It implies, too, that the mind accepts or believes in the conclusion thus reached through or by means of the premises. In other words, the resulting belief is in this case due to a recognition of a logical relation between the new and the old judgment, of the fact that the conclusion follows or flows from the premises. What, it may be asked, is the essential intellectual process here ? What relation does the mind detect between premise and conclusion in thus passing from a belief in the one to a belief in the other?

In order to ascertain this, let us take a simple example of inference from child-life. A boy of two sees the steam coming out of his food and infers that it will burn him. Supposing the child to draw this conclusion with full reflective consciousness, he may be said to go through the following steps. He first identifies the presentation, rising steam, with a past like presentation or presentations, viz., the appearance of the steam on former occasions. If he had never had any experience like this of the rising steam, he could, it is evident, carry out no process of reasoning in this case. But, in the

second place, in thus assimilating a present presentation to previous ones, he goes beyond this particular experience altogether, and, using it as a mark, infers another and heterogeneous experience, viz., that of common and tactual sensation involved in a burnt mouth. In other words, the identification of a presentation carries the child on by a process of contiguous association to the representation of one of its most interesting and impressive concomitants.

From the examination of this simple example of reasoning, viz., inferential expectation, we see that it is compounded of an assimilative process and one of associative integration. It differs, however, from the process of associative suggestion described above, since the mind does not specially recall and fix its attention on the past experience, viz., that of the previous burning or burnings, but passes on in the attitude of expectation to the idea of a recurrence of this experience in the present case. That is to say, the child does not so much recollect the fact that it was burnt, as draw the conclusion that it will be burnt now (if it takes the steaming substance into its mouth).

We may symbolically represent the difference between the reproductive process (memory) and the inferential process (expectation) in the following way :

The symbols corresponding to the past experiences as a and b are here placed in parenthesis to show that the ideas of these past experiences are not distinctly

recalled.1

§ 16. Reasoning as Synthesis. It is evident, further, from our examination of this example that, like judgment, reasoning is a process of synthesis. A relation between the presence of steam, and the sensation of heat, is established here, too; only that whereas in the mere judgment the relation is apprehended

1 On other psychical differences between memory and expectation, see above,

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461 directly, both of its terms being presented together; in the process of reasoning it is established indirectly, one term only being presented and the other being reinstated as the result of some previously apprehended relation. This indirect or mediate synthesis, moreover, is carried out by means of the identification of a common, i.e., perfectly similar, term in the two relations (present steam, past steam).

As in the case of judgment, so here it is necessary to add that the synthesis reached, though determined by the suggestive tendencies that underlie and ultimately condition all our thinking processes, involves the active element of thought, viz., voluntary attention. Even in the simple example of reasoning just given we can see that the inference is not drawn save where the presentation steam is selectively fixed so that its suggestions may be fully developed. And in the more complex cases of reasoning, where associative tendencies diverge, the active element becomes still more prominent as a selective fixation of particular elements in given presentative or representative complexes and particular suggestions of these. It is this regulative action of the will in thought which is specially marked off when it is described as a process of active combination or of construction.1

§ 17. Reasoning and Discrimination. While reasoning thus involves the two intellective functions, assimilation and association, it includes also, though in a less obvious way, the third function, discrimination. The detection of difference does not, indeed, constitute the fundamental part of the process as the detection of similarity does. A mere discovery of a difference

1 Reasoning is thus seen to be a complex of processes, a fact not always recognised. Thus the assimilative element is accentuated by Dr. Bain, who treats reasoning (mainly) under the head of agreement or law of similarity (Compendium, bk. ii. chap. ii. § 16), and by Mr. H. Spencer, who reduces all intellection to the type of classification (see especially Principles of Psychology, vol. ii. p. 117). The dependence of reasoning on association is well brought out by Münsterberg, op. cit., i. p. 141 ff. Wundt, by contrasting apperceptive combination with association, gives what has been regarded as excessive emphasis to the active element. (See Physiol. Psychologie, cap. xvii. § 3; and better, Logik, 1 abschnitt, 2er cap. 2, especially p. 53 ff.; cf. Münsterberg, loc. cit.) The constructive aspect of reasoning is well brought out by Mr. Bradley, Logic, bk. ii. pt. i. chap. iii.; cf., however, the same writer's identification of reasoning with association in an article on "Association and Thought," Mind, xii. p. 354.

carries us no further. Thus we cannot infer from the fact that A is not B that A is wanting in the concomitants of B. The identification of a common element is thus the essential preliminary in reasoning. At the same time, the noting of differences is an important auxiliary to it. By a discrimination. of things we see where resemblance ends, what is the exact extent of the similarity disclosed, and thus grow cautious and exact in our reasoning. Thus, by noting the visible difference between a scented violet and a dog violet we check the impulse to expect the sweet odour when we see the latter. Even where, as in negative reasoning, the relation of difference becomes prominent in reasoning it never usurps the place of similarity as the connecting bond. This is seen in the fact that a negation must always be combined with an affirmation before it leads to a conclusion. From all which it appears that it is the power of detecting resemblances that makes a man ready in reasoning: the person who cannot see similarity is stupid and intellectually inert. On the other hand, he who sees resemblance only will be hasty and inexact in his reasoning. A fine perception of differences is an essential characteristic of the cautious critical reasoner.

§ 17a. Common and Logical Reasoning. We see from the above example of reasoning that the common supposition of logicians, viz., that the mind starts with some known fact or truth as a premise, does not describe the process which actually takes place. In ordinary, everyday reasoning the conclusion presents itself first. In the above example the sight of the steam leads the child to expect the sensation of burning before he mentally realises the ground of this conclusion, viz., the previous experiences, steam followed or accompanied by burning. In other words, the reasoning process in its first spontaneous form simulates the guise of a mere process of judging. The grounds or premises of this conclusion, if they become distinct in consciousness at all, do so rather as an afterthought, being distinctly recalled (by aid of assimilative and associative revival) when it becomes necessary to set them forth, as, for example, if the child were asked: How do you know the milk will burn you?' In other words, in the spon. taneous reasonings of daily life, as distinguished from reasonings reduced to the forms prescribed by logic, the synthetic

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process involved in the conclusion is first performed, and the ground of this is only consciously apprehended as such where a hitch or a difficulty occurs, and the whole process becomes reflective and critical. We may say, then, that the act of drawing, with full consciousness, a conclusion from data or premises, that is to say, the explicit act of reasoning as differentiated in its form from a mere judgment, rather appears as a part of the final revisional process of proof, than of the first process of spontaneous inference. Here again we must be on our guard against taking the logician's account of how our processes of thought may be carried on as representing faithfully the manner in which they actually take place in ordinary cases.1

§ 18. Implicit Reasoning. Again, this more reflective process of reasoning in which the mind passes from previous judgments to a new one may assume one of two well-marked forms. In the first place, we may, as in the above instance, pass directly from one or more singular judgments to another singular judgment without clearly setting forth to our minds the ground of our conclusion under the form of a general truth or principle. Thus a boy having observed on one or more past occasions that a piece of wood floats in water will conclude directly in a new instance that a particular piece will float. This imperfect mode of inferring from premises has been called reasoning from particulars. It may also be called implicit reasoning, because, although a basis of inference is apprehended under the form of a previous like experience, this is not clearly thought out into the form of a general ground or universal principle.

This form of reasoning is the simplest and earliest in the order of mental development. The reasoning of the lower animals, when it is conscious inference from something already known, must be supposed to assume this form. Most of the reasoning of children is of this kind too. In all these inferences the mind passes from one or more old experiences, some or all of which are distinctly recalled according to circumstances, to new ones without seizing the general rule or principle involved

1 On the nature of such inference, see Herbert Spencer, loc. cit., p. 102. The differentiation of judgment and reasoning from a common intellectual germ is well brought out by Mr. Bradley, Logic, p. 440; cf. Stumpf, Tonpsychologie, i. § 5, PP. 89, 90.