492 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



2. As an example of an argument in which the middle 

 term is undistributed, Dr. Mercier gives — 



If Hannibal crossed the Alps, 

 and The part of the Alps that he crossed is impassable for 



elephants ; 

 then He took no elephants across with him. 



In her reply Miss Stebbing makes a slip of which her opponent 

 takes prompt advantage, as he is perfectly entitled to do. She 

 says the middle term is distributed in both premisses, whereas 

 in the first it is the predicate of an affirmative proposition, 

 and is, of course, undistributed. However, to counterbalance 

 Miss Stebbing's one mistake, Dr. Mercier makes two. First 

 he says — The middle term is the Alps. It is nothing of the 

 kind. The middle term is the part of the Alps crossed by 

 Hannibal. Surely he does not imagine that Hannibal was of 

 such transcendent size as to cover the whole Alpine range in 

 his passage. Then he goes on to say, " In the second premiss 

 part of the Alps only is referred to, and part of a class is an 

 undistributed term " — quite ignoring the fact that he has 

 added a qualification, the part of the Alps that he crossed. 

 The qualifying adjective makes all the difference, and turns 

 the undistributed into a distributed term. " Part of the 

 population " is an undistributed term, but say " The healthy 

 part of the population," and you distribute the term at once. 



3. If Some of the crew manned the jolly boat, 

 and Others manned the long boat ; 



then The whole of the crew were enough to man both these 

 boats. 



This Dr. Mercier puts forward as an argument in which a 

 term is distributed in the conclusion, although it is not dis- 

 tributed in either premiss, and here I admit Miss Stebbing's 

 reply is not quite satisfactory. However, there is a perfectly 

 valid answer, viz. that the conclusion which Dr. Mercier draws 

 is not the proper conclusion from the premisses. The correct 

 conclusion is, Some of the crew were enough, etc. In order 

 to arrive at Dr. Mercier's conclusion, a further chain of reasoning 

 is necessary, as follows : 



