ABSTRACT
The essence of all reasoning is that judgment and a new belief are determined by beliefs already established in the mind. If the old beliefs are true and the reasoning process correct, then the new belief is true and becomes an effective guide to action. The explication of the reasoning, by throwing it into the form of a syllogistic argument, serves to bring forward more prominently the meaning "all." The universality expressed by the word "all" is sometimes made much of, as the essential and peculiar feature of reasoning; and man is set apart from the animals, on the ground that he thinks in "universals," while the animal thinks only of particular objects. The philosophers and psychologists are by no means agreed as to the essential marks of reasoning; they continue to put forward views of reasoning differing as widely as Plato's differed from the theory of the early Greek materialists.
