338 PSYCEOLOOY. 



Chapter XXVIII we shall have again to consider this har- 

 mony between our reasoning faculty and the world in which 

 its lot is cast.* 



To revert now to our symbolic representation of the 

 reasoning process : 



MisP 

 SisM 



SisP 



M is discerned and picked out for the time being to be 

 the essence of the concrete fact, phenomenon, or reality, S. 

 But M in this world of ours is inevitably conjoined with P ; 

 so that P is the next thing that we may expect to find con- 

 joined with the fact S. We may conclude or infer P, 

 through the intermediation of the M which our sagacity 

 began by discerning, when S came before it, to be the 

 essence of the case. 



Now note that if P have any value or importance for us, 

 M was a very good character for our sagacity to pounce upon 

 and abstract. If, on the contrary, P were of no importance, 

 some other character than M would have been a better 

 essence for us to conceive of S by. Psychologically, as a 

 rule, P overshadows the process from the start. We are 

 seeking P, or something like P. But the bare totality of S 

 does not yield it to our gaze ; and casting about for some 

 point in S to take hold of, which will lead us to P, we hit, 

 if we are sagacious, upon M, because M happens to be just 

 the character which is knit up with P. Had we wished Q 

 instead of P, and were N a property of S conjoined with Q, 

 we ought to have ignored M, noticed N, and conceived of S 

 as a sort of N exclusively. 



Keasoning is always for a subjective interest, to attain 

 some particular conclusion, or to gratify some special 

 curiosity. It not only breaks up the datum placed before 

 it and conceives it abstractly ; it must conceive it rightly 

 too ; and conceiving it rightl}^ means conceiving it by that 

 one particular abstract character which leads to the one 



* Compare Lotze, Metaphysik, §§ 58, 67, for some mslruclive remarks 

 on ways in which the world's constitution might diller from what it actu- 

 ally is. Compare also Chapter XXVIII. 



