If this capacity of reasoning be peculiar to man, it would not appear difficult to trace the gradations of the process when he employs it: every act of intellectual exertion, deliberately performed, is attended with consciousness; he must therefore be aware of the successive steps of his march: but as this effort might be perplexing to minds unaccustomed to such deliberate and minute investigation, a readier method presents itself in order to attain the object. There are writers in all the departments of human knowledge, who are deservedly held in the highest estimation, and who have reasoned on the subjects they have treated, with the utmost correctness and ability:--let the best specimens of that, which, in these authors, is allowed to be reasoning, be selected and analysed, which will readily demonstrate the means they have pursued to arrive at their conclusion. The whole of this process being conducted by significant sounds conveyed to the ear, or in the signs of these sounds presented to the eye, the inquirer would be immediately impressed, that intelligent sound, or its character, that is, language, must be the vehicle by which this process is performed. In the next place, he would be sensible that these sounds, or their signs, were the substitutes or intended representatives of the objects in nature, either individually or collectively; for he would find that men, by the instrument of speech, had contrived, by a term, equally to express collections as well as individuals; as a man, or an army, which latter might consist of many thousands of the same beings. When he had arrived at this knowledge, he would be persuaded of the importance of these terms, and feel the necessity of their precise and uniform signification, as the representatives of the particular objects or collections they professed to describe:--because, if different significations were affixed to the same term, those who employed it could not mean the same thing. These prefatory observations appear to be proper, and it is important that the reader should bear them in mind; but it will be evident that the most correct description of objects does not constitute the process of reasoning, however indispensable it may be as its foundation.