REASONING. 339 



sort of conclusion which it is the reasoner's temporary in- 

 terest to attain.* 



The results of reasoning may be hit npon by accident. 

 The stereoscope was actually a result of reasoning; it is 

 conceivable, however, that a man playing with pictures and 

 mirrors might accidentally have hit upon it. Cats have been 

 known to open doors by pulling latches, etc. But no cat, 

 if the latch got out of order, could open the door again, 

 unless some new accident of random fumbling taught her 

 to associate some new total movement with the total phe- 

 nomenon of the closed door. A reasoning man, however, 

 would open the door by first analyzing the hindrance. He 

 would ascertain what particular feature of the door was 

 wrong. The lever, e.g., does not raise the latch sufficiently 

 from its slot- — case of insufficient elevation — raise door 

 bodily on hinges ! Or door sticks at top by friction against 

 lintel — press it bodily down ! Now it is obvious that a 

 child or an idiot might without this reasoning learn the rule 

 for opening that particular door. I remember a clock which 

 the maid-servant had discovered would not go unless it 

 were supported so as to tilt slightly forwards. She had 

 stumbled on this method after many weeks of groping. The 

 reason of the stopj)age was the friction of the pendulum- 

 bob against the back of the clock-case, a reason which an 

 educated man would have analyzed out in five minutes. I 



* Sometimes, it must be confessed, the conceiver's purpose falls short of 

 reasoning and the only conclusion he cares to reach is the bare naming of 

 the datum. " What is that?" is our first question relative to any unknown 

 thing. And the ease with which our curiosity is quenched as soon as we 

 are supplied with any sort of a name to call the object by, is ridiculous 

 enough. To quote from an unpublished essay by a former student of 

 mine, Mr. R. W. Black : " The simplest end which a thing's predicate can 

 serve is the satisfaction of the desire for unity itself, the mere desire that 

 the thing shall be the same with something else. Why, the other day, 

 when 1 mistook a portrait of Shakespeare for one of Hawthorne, was I not, 

 on psychological principles, as right as if I had correctly named it? — the 

 two pictures had a common essence, bald forehead, mustache, flowing 

 hair. Simply because the only end that could possibly be served by naming 

 it Hawthorne was my desire to have it so. With reference to any other end 

 that classification of it woidd not serve. And every unity, every identity, 

 every classification is rightly called fanciful unless it serves some other end 

 than the mere satisfaction, emotion, or inspiration caught by momentarily 

 believing in it." 



