ething
of this instinct as a distinguishing mental peculiarity, and seems to
consider it as somewhat analogous in its constitution to those animal
senses by means of which the mind becomes cognisant of external
objects, of their existence, their qualities, and their relations. In
his view, the reasoning process is vitally and essentially distinct,
as it is exercised by men and by women--

'Her rapid mind decides while his debates;
She _feels_ a truth which he but calculates.'

And certainly this is a very pretty, very poetical, and very
convenient way of accounting for a phenomenon that, if examined with
common care, suggests a solution more accurate and complete, if not
exactly so complimentary. In sober truth, a positive incapacity
clearly to point out the precise manner in which a conviction has been
formed, is one of the commonest of logical deficiencies, and no more
to be ascribed exclusively to the softer sex, than it is an attribute
of intellectual excellency in either.

When, in Euripides's beautiful play, the untranslatable _Hippolylus_,
Phaedra's nurse is made to conclude that certain men she refers to
cannot be otherwise than lax in their morals, _because_ they have
finished the roofs of their houses in a very imperfect manner, her
reasoning is inconsequential enough; but not more so than that of the
renowned French chancellor, Michael L'Hopital, who, when employed in
negotiating a treaty between Charles IX. and our Elizabeth, insisted
on the well-known line of the Latin poet--

'Et penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos,'

as a _reason_ that Calais should not be returned to the English. The
connection between the premises and the conclusion was not more real
in one case than in the other. A learned member of the medical
profession, in an elaborate work on the climate and the people of
Malta, enjoins on the invalid a participation in the amusements of
cheerful society; and the propriety of his injunction few will be
disposed to dispute: they may well, however, marvel at the _reason_ he
assigns for such sensible advice--that, so far as invalids are
concerned, society has a direct tendency to promote cutaneous
perspiration!

Cardinal de Retz severely reprehends the historians of his time for
their pedantic affectation of explaining and accounting for every
event they record--the motives that actuated this statesman, the
reasons which prompted that policy, the wherefore it was this
enterprise m