The result of all reasoning is judgment. And judgment is good as the materials of the reasoning process correspond to facts, or are in line with the most probable of the yet unknown. It is poor as the reasoning material fails to meet the facts, or is out of harmony with the most probable of the yet unproved. It is of no avail, then, to attempt to improve our final judgments as such. We must examine the materials we reason with, then learn to group and compare them logically. And in the very separating of true premises from false, we use and train the judgment we would improve. And this the normal mind can do. REACTION PROPORTIONED TO STIMULI In the normal mind the emotional or feeling accompaniment of thought and action is proportionate and adequate to the circumstances, _i. e._, there is a certain feeling, of a certain strength, natural to every thought and act; and when only that strength, not more or less, accompanies the thought or the act, we say, "That man is emotionally stable. His mind is normally balanced." Joy naturally follows some stimuli; sorrow others. Disappointment or loss, shock, failure, death of loved ones, illness in ourselves or others, do not normally bring joy. A keen sense of suffering, temporarily, perhaps, of numbness; the inability to grasp the calamity; or flowing tears, an aching heart, or the stress of willed endurance, are natural, and normal reactions to such stimuli. A developed will may refuse indulgence in the outward expression of the normal feeling of shock, grief, and loss; and this may be normal. But normal volition does not force us to laugh and dance and be wildly merry in the face of grief and loss and pain. It only suggests the adequate, reasonable acceptance of the facts that cannot be changed--the acceptance of love, faith, and hope that sees in present suffering a means of consecration to service; it does not convert the emotion of sorrow and loss into a pleasurable one. Normal reason does not suggest that _will_ force the reactions to loss and suffering that belong by nature to attainment and success. Nor does reason suggest the long face, the bitter tears, a storm of anger, in response to comedy and farce, in the face of a good joke, or to meet success; and normal will puts reason's counsel into effect. NORMAL EMOTIONAL REACTIONS