Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/311

 body admits fluids, in large quantities, through the absorbents. Now, if my meaning in the latter portion of this volume has been understood, it will be admitted that, by skilfully addressing ourselves to the intuitive faculties alone, and these gently stimulated by pleasurable emotions, the minds of children may be put in a condition to which we might fairly apply the phraseintellectual opulence. This wealth is not indeed in itself power; but it is the means of â€˜power. And now I beg the readerâ€™s attention while I point out the first steps of the mind's gradual advance from wealth to power: and by power, in this instance, I meanfirst, the ability to apprehend or admit truth, and which redeems a man from ignorance, prejudice, and illusion; secondly, the power to convey truth, which confers upon whoever possesses it a real authority over those immediately around him; and lastly, the power to discover truth, which gives to a few minds a rightful dominion over the many, and a dominion which endures from age to age.

Many and various operations of the mind, not now to be particularly described, are comprehended in the ordinary sense of the word reasoning; such asthe devising of means for discovering obscure or abstruse factsthe invention, and the most proper disposal of arguments, so as shall best bring others over to our opinion; andâ€”the compacting of facts in an inferential order, so as may really justify such and such conclusions.

Meantime the elements of the mental process on which every sort of reasoning rests, are of a very simple sort; and they imply two powers of perception, or two species of intuition, the one being an enlargement or expansion of the other, and involving more of active force. Every sort of reasoning is reducible to a series of perceptionsinstantaneous, and involuntary, and amounting to thisThat two things or notions are the same, or are not