Halleck well expresses the spirit of deductive reasoning as follows: "After induction has classified certain phenomena and thus given us a major premise, we may proceed deductively to apply the inference to any new specimen that can be shown to belong to that class. Induction hands over to deduction a ready-made premise. Deduction takes that as a fact, making no inquiry regarding its truth. Only after general laws have been laid down, after objects have been classified, after major premises have been formed, can deduction be employed." Deductive reasoning proceeds from general principles to particular facts. It is a descending process, analytical in its nature. It rests upon the fundamental axiomatic basis that "_whatever is true of the whole is true of its parts_," or "_whatever is true of the universal is true of the particulars_." The process of deductive reasoning may be stated briefly as follows: (1) A general principle of a class is stated as a _major premise_; (2) a particular thing is stated as belonging to that general class, this statement being the _minor premise_; therefore (3) the general class principle is held to apply to the particular thing, this last statement being the _conclusion_. (_A "premise" is "a proposition assumed to be true."_) The following gives us an illustration of the above process:-- I. (_Major premise_)--A bird is a warm-blooded, feathered, winged, oviparous vertebrate. II. (_Minor premise_)--The sparrow is a bird; therefore III. (_Conclusion_)--The sparrow is a warm-blooded, feathered, winged, oviparous vertebrate. Or, again:-- I. (_Major premise_)--Rattlesnakes frequently bite when enraged, and their bite is poisonous. II. (_Minor premise_)--This snake before me is a rattlesnake; therefore III. (_Conclusion_)--This snake before me may bite when enraged, and its bite will be poisonous. The average person may be inclined to object that he is not conscious of going through this complicated process when he reasons about sparrows or rattlesnakes. But he _does_, nevertheless. He is not conscious of the steps, because mental habit has accustomed him to the process, and it is performed more or less automatically. But these three steps manifest in all processes of deductive reasoning, even the simplest. The average person is like the character in the French play who was surprised to learn that he had "been talking prose for forty years without knowing it." Jevons says that the majority of persons are equally surprised when they find out that they have been using logical forms, more or less correctly, without having realized it. He says: "A large number even of educated persons have no clear idea of what logic is. Yet, in a certain way, every one must have been a logician since he began to speak."