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[Follow-up Letter to Circular]

13 March 1887

Houghton Library

Dear Sir:—No full account of my method of teaching “The Art of Reasoning” has yet been printed, but I will give you some information additional to what you will find in my circular.

First:—The machinery of the instruction is this. The correspondence is treated as strictly confidential, and no person will learn anything about it from me, except my clerks, who will see only what it is necessary and fitting they should. The pupil exercises his own discretion as to what he will say on the subject. The instruction is divided into quarters of thirty lessons each, each lesson giving the student four hours of intense mental exercise, or say about an hour each day. I begin by sending work enough to last at least four hours, and after the pupil has done two hours’ work he reports the result. After that he reports at the end of every four hours’ work; and I continue to send him work fast enough to keep him occupied. His thirty-first letter, like the first, reports upon only two hours’ work, thus making up the total of 120 hours. My letters of aid, criticism, and explanation, are similar in form to this I am writing to you. They average from 1000 to 2000 words in length. Besides these letters, he writes me two others, one at the beginning and the other at the end of the quarter. The first letter gives me all the particulars about himself, his age, history, education, purposes, plans, prospects, turn of mind, etc., that he may see fit to communicate; it also encloses a piece of his writing of say about a half a dozen pages as a favorable exhibit of the product of his brain at the outset. The letter at the end of the quarter gives some specimen of his powers at that time, so that he and I may be sure that satisfactory progress has been made. There is a similar positive test at the end of every quarter. At the end of the course I give a diploma on parchment.

Second:—I do not call the subject of my instruction Logic, but 'The Art of Reasoning”; for the ordinary text books of logic are occupied mainly with teaching simple syllogisms and dilemmas, matters forming an insignificant part of the business of thinking. Prof. Allan Marquand (there is no impropriety in my saying he is one of my pupils) has invented a machine into which premises being fed, conclusions are turned out, and that of reasonings far more complicated than are usually treated in the text books (I have remarks on this machine in the forthcoming number of the American Journal of Psychology). The fact that this work can be done by a machine sufficiently shows that it is the smallest part of the mind’s function in thinking. I teach formal logic, as well as the rest of reasoning, but I do not dwell unduly upon it. I treat rather the living process; I observe all the scholar’s bad habits of thought, and see that he corrects them. I teach him methods and artifices by which he may make difficult problems easier; and I exercise his mind in such a way that it gains strength and skill at the same time. The first point, for instance, which I bring to the test, in nearly every case, is the brightness, inventiveness, liveliness of the mind; and some exercises are devoted to waking up this faculty should it be in a dormant state, as it often is. There is much in my exercises throughout the course calculated to stimulate and strengthen this faculty, so that I only devote one or two exercises to it exclusively, at the beginning. The next thing necessary is to see that the man makes a vigorous distinction between fact and fancy. Commonly this is sufficiently developed before my pupils come to me; but young people who have had little experience of the realities of life, and a few dreamy natures, need sometimes to be led into a line of thought which will emphasize this. Some fancy that reasoning has to be performed within the private chambers of their own brains, and do not appreciate, at first, how intimately it is connected with the real world. At this point, I am in the habit of giving my pupils some lessons in the art of learning, without always explaining what it is that I am then teaching. I find it quite important, in most cases, to see that they receive some advice and training as to just how they are to go to work, and what the attitude of their mind is to be in learning. We then come to the last of the preliminary studies, namely, learning some things about the English language. Everybody knows that accuracy of speech is an important condition of accurate thinking. Consequently, I take up seriatim a considerable number of words and forms of expression, and substitute definite ideas of their meaning for the loose ones which are current with untrained minds. In the course of these lessons, the pupil picks up something of the philosophy of speech. By this time he already begins to show some signs of greater strength of thought. I now explain how to unravel complicated inferences which involve no considerations of quantity, nor any but very simple relations. Here, for example is one of these exercises.

—A young king, on coming to the throne, found himself attacked by a powerful neighbor, and thereupon made the following reflections. I shall either prove myself a great man and conquer in the first campaign, or a prudent man and trust implicitly in my chancellor, or a fool and ruin the dynasty by headstrong rashness. If I am a great man, and popular with the army, my soldiers will not mutiny. If I am a prudent man, or have good counsellors, I shall obtain the assistance of some of the neighboring princes. If I am a fool, or behave like a coward, I shall alienate my people. If my soldiers do not mutiny and I conquer in the first campaign, I shall reduce my enemy to vassalage, unless I ruin the dynasty by headstrong rashness in spite of good counsellors. If I gain the assistance of a neighboring prince, and trust implicitly to my chancellor, I shall be compelled to behave like a coward, but I shall not ruin the dynasty by headstrong rashness. If I am positively popular with the army, I shall conquer in the first campaign. Of all these things I am profoundly convinced; and they afford me a legitimate ground of confidence; for I have only to resolve that I will do nothing to alienate my people unless it assures my popularity with the army, and that if I have good counsellors I will trust implicitly to my chancellor, and thus I shall be assured of reducing my enemy to vassalage. Was this conclusion well drawn?

Thence I proceed to inferences about relations presenting considerable more difficulty than the example above. Then I set the pupil to analyzing some piece of real argumentation, such as Mr. George’s Progress and Poverty, or Butler’s Analogy. Some exercises upon definitions, the analysis of ideas, and how to form clear conceptions, complete the first part. The course, in this part as in the others, is modified to suit the individual needs and purposes of each pupil. It occupies either one or two quarters. The second part of the course exercises the pupil in reasonings in which quantity is involved. It shows him how to take a mathematical view of many subjects not usually so regarded, as “Political Economy,” etc. It initiates him into the methods of thinking about mathematical questions. It also includes a course in the doctrine of chances with practical examples ranging from the easiest to really difficult ones. It gives the main principles of insurance, in all its forms; and the method used by scientific men in estimating errors of observations.

Part 3 teaches how to deal with real facts. It does not enter into methods of scientific observation, but does show by practical problems what observations are needed to be made. It exercises the pupil in the art of making good inductions and hypotheses by means of a series of problems, in the invention of which I have spent a great deal of time and thought. These are of the most various description. The reading of cipher dispatches is one kind. I then teach the pupil how to use a library. That is to say, required a certain piece of information, and given a library, the problem is to obtain that information in the shortest possible time. There are also exercises in asking questions so as to elicit a given piece of information as quickly as possible. Two quarters are devoted to this third part.

The above will give you some idea of the nature of my course, and will enable you to form some opinion as to its usefulness. No pupil fails to profit by it more or less; and I would not keep on with any pupil who should not have profited greatly by his last quarter. The better the man’s previous training, the more he will profit under me, as a general rule. At the same time, I find persons whose minds are quite undeveloped usually reap more good from my course, than they would be likely to do from any other teaching which is within their reach.

Yours truly,