of reasoning in this
condensed form, whether your own or some one else's, which seems to you
suspicious, if you expand it into a full syllogism you will have all its
parts laid bare for scrutiny. Take, for example, the assertion,
_"Robinson Crusoe" must be a true story, for everything in it is so
minutely described_: if you expand it into the full syllogism, _All
books in which the description is minute are true, "Robinson Crusoe" is
a book in which the description is minute, Therefore "Robinson Crusoe"
is true_, you would at once stick at the major premise. So where you
suspect an ambiguity in the use of terms, you can bring it to the
surface, if it is there, by the same sort of expansion. In the argument,
_Bachelors should be punished, because they break a law of nature_, the
ambiguity becomes obvious when you expand: _All law breakers should be
punished, Bachelors break a law of nature, Therefore bachelors should be
punished_; at once you see that _law_ is used in two senses, one the
_law of the land_, the other the statement of a uniformity in nature. In
the argument, _These men are good citizens, for they take an interest in
politics_, the expansion to _All good citizens are interested in
politics, These men are interested in politics, Therefore these men are
good citizens,_[41] shows that the reasoning contains a breach of the
third rule of the syllogism (see p. 148) and is therefore a case of the
fallacy of the undistributed middle.

Whenever you make or find an assertion with a reason attached by such a
word as "since," "for," or "because," or an assertion with a consequence
attached by a word like "therefore," "hence," or "accordingly," you have
a case of this condensed reasoning, which, theoretically at any rate,
you can expand into a full syllogism, and so go over the reasoning link
by link.

Sometimes, however, the expansion is far from easy, for in many of the
practical exigencies of everyday life our judgments are intuitive, and
not reasoned. In such judgments we jump to a conclusion by an
inarticulate, unreasoned feeling of what is true or expedient, and the
grounds of the feeling may be so shadowy and complex that they can never
be adequately displayed.

"Over immense departments of our thought we are still, all of us, in the
savage state. Similarity operates in us, but abstraction
has not taken place. We know what the present case is like, we know
what it reminds us of, we have an intuition of the r