_Virtual Analysis of complex Conceptions._--Now when I affirm that the table is round, I state one of the several qualities of the object so called, one of the several parts of the complex notion. It is a partial analysis of that complex conception. I separate from the whole, one of its component parts, and then affirm that it sustains the relation of a part to the comprehensive whole. The separation is a virtual analysis. The affirmation is an act of judgment expressed in the form of a proposition. Every proposition is, in fact, a species of synthesis, and implies the previous analysis of the conception, or comprehensive whole, whose component parts are thus brought together. Thus, when I say snow is white, man is mortal, the earth is round, I simply affirm of the object designated, one of the qualities which go to make up my conception of that object. Every such statement or proposition involves an analysis of the complex conception which forms the subject of the proposition, while the thing predicated or affirmed is, that the quality designated--the result of such analysis--is one of the parts constituting that complex whole. _Reasoning, what._--Reasoning is simply a series of such propositions following in consecutive order, in which this analysis is carried out more or less minutely. Thus, when I affirm that man is mortal, I resolve my complex notion of man into its component parts, among which I find the attribute of mortality, and this attribute I then proceed to affirm of the subject, man. I simply evolve, and distinctly announce, what was involved in the term man. But this term expresses not merely a complex, but a general notion. Resolving it as such into its individual elements, I find it to comprehend among the rest, a certain person, Socrates, _e. g._, and the result of this analysis I state in the proposition, Socrates is a man. But on the principle that what is true of a class must be true of the individuals composing it, it follows that the mortality already predicated of the class, man, is an attribute of the individual, Socrates. When I affirm, then, that Socrates is mortal, I announce, in reality, only what was virtually implied in the first proposition--man is mortal. I have analyzed the complex general conception, man, have found involved in it the particular conception, mortal, and the individual conception, Socrates, and by a subsequent synthesis have brought together these results in the proposition, Socrates is mortal, a proposition which sustains to the affirmation, man is mortal, the simple relation of a part to the whole. _Reasoning and Analysis, how related._--This analytic process, as applied to propositions, for the purpose of evolving from a complex general statement, whatever is involved or virtually contained in it, is called reasoning; as applied not to propositions, but to simple conceptions merely, it is known as simple analysis. The psychological process is, in either case, one and the same.