When the mind is employed in discriminating, arranging, judging, and reasoning, these several acts are all of a class, and are called rational or logical processes. Their importance can hardly be overestimated, as thus the reasoner gets assured possession of judgments or beliefs that are more or less general, and derives from them those that are particular and applicable in any exigency; or by the inductive method, from the particular facts within his knowledge, arrives at general propositions, and securely rests in them as true. In many, perhaps in most cases, both processes, the deductive and inductive, are used or implied. We understand phenomena or effects by their causes, and infer causes from their effects, explain the present by what has been, and anticipate the future by interpreting the past. We reason from what is seen to the unseen, from the facts of nature to nature’s laws. Systems of logic, if judiciously arranged, are of much value, and should be studied as guides and helps in our efforts to know the certainty of things. Method in reasoning is of much importance. But while comparatively few understand the rules, or adopt the exact technical terms used by scientific logicians, others, using methods and terms of their own, think vigorously, and reason well. The powers employed by the most thoroughly trained scholar and by the unlettered man may be equal, nor are their methods half so different as some suppose. Though the latter forms no expanded syllogisms,[1] says nothing of “subject,” “predicate,” or “copula,” he as really has his premises, reasons from what he knows, and in many cases reaches his conclusions with about the same feeling of certainty. The knowledge he gains does not differ from that of those who are guided in their reasonings by the best rules that observation and experience suggest. Some of those, who in this matter of logic are a law unto themselves, not only reason well, but often very rapidly. Judgment is given so speedily on the presentation of the case that it seems intuitive. There is but a step from the premises of an argument, securely laid in what is conceded in the statement, or what they already know, to the conclusion that is legitimate, and they take it at once. Now, if this is true, and common sense reasonings often seem so easy, while those conducted by men of much science are often difficult and tedious, it may be asked what advantage, then, is there in the logic of the schools? A sufficient answer is found in the fact that the thoroughly trained logician can solve problems the other never attempts. In his processes the properties and relations observed are less obvious or more complicated than anything presented to the other. To apprehend them clearly, closer attention must be given than most men, without such training, ever give or can give. And then, the conclusions of the ready, rapid, though untrained, reasoner who investigates only common