200

19

That is to say, we criticize our conclusion, by comparing it with a logical ideal, we recognize it as belonging to the class of sound reasonings.
The conclusion was in the first instance irresistible.
It came upon the mind before there was any time to control it.
But it is no sooner there than the critical comparison is made between it and our logical ideal, our logica uterus or logical synderesis.
If it is found to satisfy that ideal, we definitively accept it.
If not, we reject it.
Unless this critical control be exercized, the operation of thought is not to be called reasoning.
I have thus described the principal facts of reasoning; but it remains to consider the phenomena of feeling that appear during the process although they are by no means prominent.
It is a remarkable law of mind that