REASONING. 341 



if he views it througli a convex glass. In neither of these 

 cases could the result be anticipated without full previous 

 acquaintance with the entire phenomenon. It is not a 

 result of reasoning. 



But a man Avho should conceive heat as a mode of 

 motion, and liquefaction as identical with increased motion 

 of molecules ; who should know that curved surfaces bend 

 light-rajs in sjoecial wa^'s, and that the apparent size of 

 anything is connected with the amount of tha ' bend ' of its 

 light-rays as they enter the eye, — such a man would make 

 the right inferences for all these objects, even though he 

 had never in his life had any concrete experience of them ; 

 and he would do this because the ideas which we have 

 above supposed him to possess would mediate in his mind 

 between the phenomena he starts with and the conclusions 

 he draws. But these ideas or reasons for his conclusions 

 are all mere extracted portions or circumstances singled 

 out from the mass of characters which make up the entire 

 phenomena. The motions which form heat, the bending 

 of the light-waves, are, it is true, excessively recondite 

 ingredients ; the hidden pendulum I spoke of above is less 

 so ; and the sticking of a door on its sill in the earlier ex- 

 ample would hardly be so at all. But each and all agree 

 in this, that they bear a more evident relation to the con- 

 clusion than did the immediate data in their full totality. 



The diihculty is, in each case, to extract from the im- 

 mediate data that particular ingredient which shall have 

 this very evident relation to the conclusion. Every phe- 

 nomenon or so-called ' fact ' has an infinity of aspects or 

 properties, as we have seen, amongst which the fool, or 

 man with little sagacity, will inevitably go astray. But no 

 matter for this point now. The first thing is to have seen 

 that every possible case of reasoning involves the extrac- 

 tion of a particular partial aspect of the phenomena thought 

 about, and that whilst Empirical Thought simply associates 

 phenomena in their entirety. Reasoned Thought couples 

 them by the conscious use of this extract. 



2. And, now, to prove the second point : Why are the 

 couplings, consequences, and implications of extracts more 



