182 Mk DE morgan, on THE SYLLOGISM, No. IH, 



which are incessantly used. I insert it for the consideration of those who, for want of advice 

 to the contrary, imagine that the logical gymnastic can afford no higher exercise than the per- 

 ception of 'No cruel is kind, some cruel is tyrant, therefore some tyrant is not kind', duly 

 chronicled as Ferison* of the third figure, cousin by the conversion side to Ferio of the first. 

 The following single, though not simple, syllogism is an extract from a letter to a person who 

 had supposed, from some circumstances of character and fact, that a common friend of his own 

 and of the writer must have been the person who had figured in the narrative of a very silly 

 proceeding : — 



"We both see clearly enough that he Qthe hero of the narrative] must have been rich, and if not absolutely 

 mad, was weakness itself subjected either to bad advice, or to most unfavourable circumstances. How then can you 

 persist in identifying him with the friend of whom we are now speaking ; who was indeed veiy rich, and easily 

 swayed, and so far, we will say, not distinguishable from our hero ; but who was conspicuous for clearness of 

 head and sobriety of fancy ; who never sought serious counsel except from his father's old friends, and you know 

 what men they were ; and who passed his youth in severe study varied only by useful exertion, and his manhood 

 in domestic life and country occupations." 



Says the man of the world to the logician, I am very clear that two men who are proved 

 to be different cannot be the same : but all I learnt at college about identity and difference, 

 and excluded middle into the bargain, has done nothing towards putting me into a condition 

 rapidly to assert or deny that the advocate has put the principle of difference between the rich 

 fool and his rich friend. Here are two complex descriptions one of which contradicts the 

 other. The description of the rich fool excludes him from either of three classes : the descrip- 

 tion of the rich friend places him in one of those classes : the two cannot then be the same. 

 In the symbols I use — and symbols will one day be the scaffolding of logical education, 

 though useless then, as now, to all who have not mastered them — the argument is expressed 

 as follows. H is the rich fool; h any other person; H' the rich friend; R rich, r not rich; 

 W weak, w not weak ; A badly advised, a not so ; C unfavourably circumstanced, c not so. 



H)) R[M, W(A, C)] ; contrapositively, r, m (w, ac) )) h ; 

 or r, mw, mac)) h ; but H')) mac ; whence H')) h ; or H') • (H. 



The syllogism itself is the web of an argument, on which the tapestry of thought is 

 woven ; the primed canvas on which the picture is painted. The logician presents it to the 

 world as the tapestry or the picture: he does this in effect by the position he makes it occupy; 

 for he sends the primed canvas to the exhibition. And the world does not see that, though 

 the syllogism be a mere canvas, it stands to the thinker in a very different position from that 

 in which the canvas stands to the painter. Call the historian or the moralist a practised artist 

 at a thousand a year, and I am well content that his structure of the canvas shall be valued at 

 ten shillings a week : it would not hurt my argument if it were valued at a halfpenny. For 

 the painter can and does delegate the preparation of the canvas ; the historian cannot put out 

 his logic. He must do it himself as he goes on ; and he must do it well, or his whole work 

 is spoiled. 



• I think as I always did of the admirable ingenuity of these words, for their purpose : they are the most meaninff words 

 ever made. 



