Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/313

 complex. This being the case, it is manifest that, in eliciting and exercising the sense of resemblance, and in giving it acuteness, we are making the true preparation for sound reasoning: and further, that, in advancing from the sense of resemblance, to the perception of analogy, we are leading the mind forward in a course which enables it intuitively to discern those relations of sameness which are of a somewhat abstruse kind: such for instance as the same-ness of law, or principle, or mode of operation, in the system of nature.

There are some who reason inconclusively, or confusedly, because they do not link the series of relations well; or do not retain their hold of the chain in its entireness; but there are many more who never reason at all, or to no good purpose, simply because the rudimental facultythe first perceptive power, has acquired no precision, no tenacity. Such persons may have learned logic, and may be able to build, and to knock down, paper-houses of syllogisms; but there is no reality, no vitality in the process:they are convinced of nothing by the result of all this labour; nor do they find themselves able to produce conviction in other minds.

In truth, very much of what is done and taught in the course of a common education, tells for little or nothing in active life, because, while the after stages of the reasoning process have been, with some industry, attended to, the preliminary work of training the intuitive faculties has been wholly forgotten. In other words, logic may have been taught and learned; but the rudiment of reasoning has not been acquired. Now, if one or the other part of this process of culture must be slighted, it were better to neglect the latter; because, apart from the first, the second is absolutely of no avail; but if the first has been duly regarded, the second will follow, almost of itself. Good reasoners and efficient speakers, in relation to the common