Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/312

 the same; or that they stand in such or such a relation, one to the other. When one such relation of sameness or of difference, or of proportion, has been accepted by the mind, then comes another set, or, we may better saybrace of relationships, taking hold of the preceding one by some similar link of sameness or proportion: and to this perhaps succeeds a third, in like manner linked to its immediate predecessor.

In this process there is, as we have said, firstthe intuition in regard to two single objects; and secondly, an intuition in regard to the series of intuitions. Now, even the power to admit the simple intuition, or rudiment of reasoning, is not always found apart from some culture and practice; and many minds never reach so far as to this point. But the power to admit, and the power to keep a hold of the second sort of intuitions, and which is essential to what is called a process of reasoning, or an argument, is always the result, either of much culture, or of much practice;it is a power to be acquired. In mathematical reasoning we may feel our way, step by step, and go on, as it were, blindly, or without any grasping of the entire process: but in every other kind of reasoning, dependent upon so ambiguous an instrument as language, there is no safety or certainty except in a constant exertion of this grasping power; or, to change the figurein looking, every moment, from end to end of the path we are treading, and in taking care that, at every step, we keep the exact line. Mathematical reasoning is a going on between two walls: moral reasoning is the finding, and the holding to a path, over a common.

As itis not, in this place, my intention to treat the subject of reasoning, in a formal manner, I abstain from elucidations and examples, wishing only to fix the reader's attention upon the fact, that the rudiment of reasoning, of whatever sort, is INTUITION;intuition simple, and