Welcome to the Simply Charlotte Mason podcast. I'm Sonia Schaefer. We've been looking at core values of a Charlotte Mason approach.

And last time in this series, we looked at the difference between I want and I will.

And how important it is that our children understand that difference. If you haven't yet listened to that episode, I encourage you to do that in order to get

the background for what we're going to discuss today.

Check the show notes for a link.

Those of you who have listened to that episode will remember that there are two guides to

moral and intellectual self-management to offer to children, which

we may call the way of the will and the way of the reason.

A Philosophy of Education, introductory page 31.

We talked about the way of the will last time.

Today we want to look at the way of the reason.

It seems like the world around us loves to put a big emphasis on logic and reasoning.

And Charlotte was not opposed to training children in reasoning.

However, she was also careful to point out the limits of logic, which I think many people

today tend to overlook.

Here's how she explained, the way of the reason.

We teach children, too, not to lean too confidently to their own understanding, because the

function of reason is to give logical demonstration, A, of mathematical truth mathematical truth and B of an initial idea accepted

by the will.

In the former case, reason is practically an infallible guide.

But in the latter, it is not always a safe one.

For whether that idea be right or wrong, reason will confirm

...