How to Reason

How to Reason: A Critick of Arguments is the title of a projected treatise on logic on which Peirce worked extensively in 1894. The treatise was to include, along with several new chapters, also revisions of some of Peirce’s early papers, among which the “New List” and “Fixation.” In June 1894 the work was submitted to Ginn & Co., but it was rejected on the ground that it was too technical a work and thus not suitable as a textbook. Further attempts to publish the work failed. ¹ About a year later, probably in the summer of 1895, Peirce began composing a smaller book, which he titled Short Logic. “Of Reasoning in General” (R 595) is the first and only chapter that he wrote for that book, and is in fact a compendium of the “grammatical” chapters of How to Reason. The Short Logic was likewise submitted to Ginn & Co., but like the larger work it was not accepted for publication. ²