e judgment will depend on the thoroughness of our
knowledge of the terms compared. If we know but few of the attributes of
either term of the judgment, the judgment is clearly unsafe. Imperfect
concepts lie at the basis of many of our wrong judgments. A young man
complained because his friend had been expelled from college for alleged
misbehavior. He said, "Mr. A---- was the best boy in the institution."
It is very evident that someone had made a mistake in judgment. Surely
no college would want to expel the best boy in the institution. Either
my complainant or the authorities of the college had failed to
understand one of the terms in the judgment. Either "Mr. A----" or "the
best boy in the institution" had been wrongly interpreted by someone.
Likewise, one person will say, "Jones is a good man," while another will
say, "Jones is a rascal." Such a discrepancy in judgment must come from
a lack of acquaintance with Jones or a lack of knowledge of what
constitutes a good man or a rascal.

No doubt most of us are prone to make judgments with too little
knowledge of the terms we are comparing, and it is usually those who
have the least reason for confidence in their judgments who are the most
certain that they cannot be mistaken. The remedy for faulty judgments
is, of course, in making ourselves more certain of the terms involved,
and this in turn sends us back for a review of our concepts or the
experience upon which the terms depend. It is evident that no two
persons can have just the same concepts, for all have not had the same
experience out of which their concepts came. The concepts may be named
the same, and may be nearly enough alike so that we can usually
understand each other; but, after all, I have mine and you have yours,
and if we could each see the other's in their true light, no doubt we
should save many misunderstandings and quarrels.

6. REASONING

All the mental processes which we have so far described find their
culmination and highest utility in _reasoning_. Not that reasoning comes
last in the list of mental activities, and cannot take place until all
the others have been completed, for reasoning is in some degree present
almost from the dawn of consciousness. The difference between the
reasoning of the child and that of the adult is largely one of
degree--of reach. Reasoning goes farther than any of the other processes
of cognition, for it takes the relations expressed in judgments and out
of these