stand, they generally reason well. But sometimes they reason ill; and 'tis the business of the art of reasoning to show them when they reason ill, and to teach them how to reason well. Such an art cannot be otherwise than useful. It must be useful to know how to do well anything we have to do every day and several times a-day. And when we recollect that much of our health, our success in business, our moral and religious character, our present and future happiness, our reputation in the world, and our usefulness to others, will depend upon the soundness of our reasonings, the art will appear to us to be of very high importance. We shall point out a few respects in which it is useful:

I. The Art of Reasoning is useful by enabling us to form our own judgments.

You talk, of course, about a great many things. You talk about yourself; about your friends, and relations, and acquaintances; about your trade and profession; about the accidents and offences you read of in the newspaper; about public measures and public men; about France, and Russia, and America, and other nations with whom we may be or expect to be at war; about right and wrong; justice and injustice; wealth and poverty; slavery and liberty; and on Sundays, if not on other days, you will talk about religion, or at least about the pope and the Church, and the parson, and about people who are supposed to be religious. Now, upon all these subjects, and a variety of others, you will probably give opinions, and most likely very correct opinions, provided you talk only of what you understand. But to guard against giving incorrect or unguarded opinions, you may as well take a lesson or two upon the right way of reasoning.

You will say that you can do all this without the aid of logic. So you can. But logic will teach you how to do it better. Logic will teach you that you must form your opinions by reason alone, without any bias from your passions or feelings. Logic will teach you that you must be able to give a reason for all the opinions you entertain. Logic will teach you that you must look at both sides of the question, and examine the arguments that can be advanced against any opinion as well as those that may be

advanced in its favour; and that you must weigh these arguments, and see which side preponderates. Logic will teach you that after having done this, you must be ready to admit any new facts or arguments that may appear on either side of the question. In these various ways a knowledge of the art of reasoning will be useful to yourself.

By thus examining the reasons for your opinions you will soon learn to distinguish between good reasons and bad ones. You will get into the practice of using good reasons and discarding bad ones. You will thus acquire the habit of reasoning well, and when assailed with bad reasons you will know how to refute them.

II. The Art of Reasoning is useful in teaching us how to give instruction and advice to others.

You will have occasion to give instruction or advice to others. You will often have occasion to do this in your family. But, besides, you may be a director in a public company, or on the committee of a charitable institution, or may be consulted by your friends in cases of emergency. In all these positions it is desirable you should be able to give good advice, and to enforce it by reasonable considerations. You know that the counsel of Ahithophel was so highly esteemed that it was as if a man had inquired at the oracle of God, (2 Sam. xvi. 23,) and doubtless you have known men who, though not gifted with eloquence or talent, have yet been so remarkable for soundness of judgment that they have been treated with universal respect. If you accustom yourself to reason well when forming your own opinions, you will insensibly acquire the habit of reasoning well when stating those opinions to other people.

III. The Art of Reasoning is useful by enabling us to defend our own principles against the attacks of opponents, and to give them currency in the world.

You may have to defend your opinions against the attacks of those who hold contrary opinions. You must not hesitate to do this when the cause of truth or of justice requires it. When your own character or that of your friends, or your political or religious principles are assailed, you are bound to make resistance, and it will be useful to be able to do it well. The political and religious differ

ences that exist among mankind are by no means to be deplored as unmingled evils. They serve to awaken the nobler feelings of the soul, and to maintain attention to principles that might otherwise be forgotten. They stimulate the intellectual powers, and impart an energy to all the faculties and to all the operations of the mind. To engage in controversy does not imply that you are to vituperate the person, misrepresent the opinions, or calumniate the character of your opponents. You will be less liable to fall into these practices if you understand the art of reasoning. You will then have no occasion for these ignoble weapons.-You will be conscious that the force of truth and the power of logic will have much greater effect in defeating your antagonists.

A dispute," says Mr. Robinson, "is an oral controversy, and a controversy is a written dispute. To controvert or dispute a point, either by word or writing, is only to agitate a question in order to obtain clear ideas of it. Can it be admitted that religion does not admit of this? The whole of the Jewish religion was a controversy against heathenism. The writings of prophets are eminently argumentative. The book of Job is a controversy. St. Paul's Epistles are most of them controversial. The Apostles arrived at truth by means of much disputing among themselves (Acts xv. 7.) And they convinced the Jews and the Gentiles by disputing with both. (Acts xvii. 17; xix. 8.) Every article of religion is denied by some, and cannot be believed without examination and discussion by any. Religion authorizes us to investigate, debate, dispute, and controvert each article, in order to ascertain its evidence."*

IV. The Art of Reasoning is useful by strengthening the memory and systematizing our knowledge :

"Memory may be wonderfully strengthened," says Sidney Smith, "by referring single facts and observations to one simple principle, and by these means we can either remember the principle by remembering the fact, or the fact by remembering the principle. Thus, if we were to prove that democracy leads to despotism, we may refer to Julius Cæsar, Cromwell, and Bonaparte. France has fallen under the dominion of a single man, so did Rome, so have innumerable free countries: the cause in many instances has been precisely the same-that anarchy which has been produced by the licentiousness of the people, and which has

*Notes to Claude's Essay on the Composition of a Sermon.

rendered them an easy prey to the first ambitious man who could ingratiate himself with the army. Such examples are very trite, and what may occur to any one. I only mention them to illustrate the importance of philosophical arrangement to memory, and to show how much more likely facts are to reappear when we want them, if we have clustered numbers of them together as illustrative of a simple principle, than if they are promiscuously scattered through the understanding without any such connecting tie."*

V. The Art of Reasoning is useful by tending to prevent those evils that arise from the passions or the imagination obtaining an ascendancy over the judgment.

"The registers of the Bicêtre, for a series of years, show that even when madness affects those who belong to the educated classes, it is chiefly seen in those whose education has been imperfect or irregular, and very rarely indeed in those whose minds have been fully, equally, and systematically exercised. Priests, artists, painters, sculptors, poets, and musicians, whose professions so often appear marked in that register, are often persons of very limited or exclusive education; their faculties have been unequally exercised; they have commonly given themselves up too much to imagination, and have neglected comparison, and have not habitually exercised the judgment. Even of this class it is to be remembered that it is commonly those of the lowest order of the class, in point of talent, who become thus affected: whilst of naturalists, physicians, chemists, and geometricians, it is said not one instance occurs in these registers. If one go from individual to individual in any lunatic establishment, and investigate the character and origin of the madness of each, we shall find for every one who has become insane from the exercise of his mind, at least a hundred have become insane from the undue indulgence of their feelings. Those men who really most exercise the faculties of their minds, meaning thereby all their faculties, their attention, reflection, or comparison, as well as their imagination and memory, are least liable to insanity. An irregular and injudicious cultivation of poetry and painting has often concurred to produce madness, but nothing is rarer than to find a mad mathematician: for, as no study demands more attention than mathematics, so it secures the student, during a great part of his time, from the recurrence of feelings which are always the most imperious in those who are the least occupied."†

VI. The Art of Reasoning is useful, as it will not only give method and system to our own habits, but it will by

Elementary sketches of Moral Philosophy.

† On Man's Power over himself to prevent or control Insanity. (Pickering.)

the force of example, enforce corresponding modes of thinking and acting on those around us. And thus their reasonings will often be useful in return to ourselves :

It is useful to a husband to have a logical wife. "But the angel of the Lord did no more appear to Manoah and to his wife. Then Manoah knew that he was an angel of the Lord. And Manoah said unto his wife, We shall surely die, because we have seen God. But his wife said unto him, If the Lord were pleased to kill us, he would not have received a burntoffering and a meat-offering at our hands, neither would he have showed us all these things, nor would as at this time have told us such things as these."-Judges xiii. 21-23.

It is useful to a wife to have a logical husband.

"Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine integrity? curse God, and die. But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?"-Job ii. 9, 10.

It is useful to a master to have logical servants.

"Now Naaman, captain of the host of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master, and honourable, because by him the Lord had given deliverance unto Syria: he was also a mighty man in valour, but he was a leper. . . . . So Naaman came with his horses and with his chariot, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha. And Elisha sent a messenger unto him, saying, Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean. But Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper. Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? may I not wash in them, and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage. And his servants came near, and spake unto him, and said, My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldst thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, Wash, and be clean? Then went he down, and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God: and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.". 2 Kings v. 1, 9-14.

It is useful to servants to have a logical master.

"Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye