=Errors in Judgment due to: A. Faulty Concepts.=--It may be seen from the foregoing that our judgments, when explicitly grasped by the mind and predicated in language, reflect the accuracy or inaccuracy of our concepts. Whatever relations are, as it were, wrapped up in a concept may merge at any time in the form of explicit judgments. If the fact that the only Chinamen seen by a child are engaged in laundry work causes this attribute to enter into his concept Chinaman, this will lead him to affirm that the restaurant keeper, Wan Lee, is a laundry-man. The republican who finds two or three cases of corruption among democrats, may conceive corruption as a quality common to democrats and affirm that honest John Smith is corrupt. Faulty concepts, therefore, are very likely to lead to faulty judgments. A first duty in education is evidently to see that children are forming correct class concepts. For this it must be seen that they always distinguish the essential features of the class of objects they are studying. They must learn, also, not to conclude on account of superficial likeness that really unlike objects belong to the same class. The child, for instance, in parsing the sentence, "The swing broke down," must be taught to look for essential characteristics, and not call the word _swing_ a gerund because it ends in "ing"; which, though a common characteristic of gerunds, does not differentiate it from other classes of words. So, also, when the young nature student notes that the head of the spider is somewhat separated from the abdomen, he must not falsely conclude that the spider belongs to the class insects. In like manner, the pupil must not imagine, on account of superficial differences, that objects really the same belong to different classes, as for example, that a certain object is not a fish, but a bird, because it is flying through the air; or that a whale is a fish and not an animal, because it lives in water. The pupil must also learn to distinguish carefully between the particular and universal judgment. To affirm that "Men strive to subdue the air," does not imply that "John Smith strives to subdue the air." The importance of this distinction will be considered more fully in our next section. =B. Feeling.=--Faulty concepts are not, however, the only causes for wrong judgments. It has been noted already that feeling enters largely as a factor in our conscious life. Man, therefore, in forming his judgments, is always in danger of being swayed by his feelings. Our likes and dislikes, in other words, interfere with our thinking, and prevent us from analysing our knowledge as we should. Instead, therefore, of striving to develop true concepts concerning men and events and basing our judgments upon these, we are inclined in many cases to allow our judgments to be swayed by mere feeling.