This Book owes its origin to the indefinable sense of uneasiness and discontent into which I was thrown by the perusal of some of the best treatises on Logic. These treatises had failed to explain the nature of the logical or reasoning faculty, though purporting to indicate the laws which govern its proper functioning. Even the work of John Stuart Mill, which still remains in my opinion the best, was no more convincing than the rest. And the more I read of such books the less satisfied I became and the stonger became my desire to understand clearly what constituted reasoning.As for the psychologists I found to my surprise that they either omitted reasoning altogether, or alluded to it in a most superficial manner.
Chapter I On the Mnemonic Origin and Nature of Affective TendenciesChapter II AttentionPart I: Affective Conflict and Unity of ConsciousnessChapter III AttentionPart II: Vividness and ConnectionChapter IV What is ReasoningChapter V The Evolution of ReasoningPart I: From Concrete reasoning to Abstract ReasoningChapter VI The Evolution of ReasoningPart II From Intuition to DeductionChapter VII The Higher Forms of ReasoningPart II: Mathematical Reasoning in its Phases of symbolic condensation and symbolic inversionChapter IX The Higher Forms of ReasoningPart III: Mathematics and Mathematical LogicChapter X "Intentional" ReasoningPart I: Dialectic ReasoningChapter XI "Intentional" reasoningPart II: Metaphysical ReasoningChapter XII The Different Logical Types of MindChapter XIII The Pathology of ReasoningPart I: The Incoherence and Illogicality of DreamsChapter XIV The Pathology of ReasoningPart III: Incoherent Insanity due to Mono-affectivism Chapter XV The Pathology of ReasoningPart III: Incoherent Insanity due to Instability, Impotence or Absence of the Affective TendenciesChapter XVI Conscious and Unconscious reasoningConclusionReasoning in Relation to Vital FinalismIndex