14 NOVUM ORGANUM 



being very unequal to the subtilty of nature. It forces 

 assent, therefore, and not things. 



XIV. The syllogism consists of propositions; proposi 

 tions of words; words are the signs of notions. If, there 

 fore, the notions (which form the basis of the whole) be 

 confused and carelessly abstracted from things, there is no 

 solidity in the superstructure. Our only hope, then, is in 

 genuine induction. 



XV. We have no sound notions either in logic or phys 

 ics; substance, quality, action, passion, and existence are 

 not clear notions; much less weight, levity, density, tenu 

 ity, moisture, dryness, generation, corruption, attraction, 



purely a formal process, and must, as the scaffolding to the building, be em 

 ployed to arrange facts in the structure of a science, and not to form any por 

 tion of its groundwork, or to supply the materials of which the system is to 

 be composed. The word syllogism, like most other pyschological terms, has 

 no fixed or original signification, but is sometimes employed, as it was by the 

 Greeks, to denote general reasoning, and at others to point out the formal 

 method of deducing a particular inference from two or more general proposi 

 tions. Bacon does not confine the term within tho boundaries of express defi 

 nition, but leaves us to infer that he took it in the latter sense, from his custom 

 of associating the term with the wranglings of the schools. The scholastics, it 

 is true, abused the deductive syllogism, by employing it in its naked, skeleton- 

 like form, and confounding it with the whole breadth of logical theory; but 

 their errors are not to be visited on Aristotle, who never dreamed of playing 

 with formal syllogisms, and, least of all, mistook the descending for the ascend 

 ing series of inference. In our mind we are of accord with the Stagyrite, who 

 propounds, as far as we can interpret him, two modes of investigating truth 

 the one by which we ascend from particular and singular facts to general laws 

 and axioms, and the other by which we descend from universal propositions to 

 the individual cases which they virtually include. Logic, therefore, must equally 

 vindicate the formal purity of the synthetic illation by which it ascends to the 

 whole, as the analytic process by which it descends to the parts. The deductive 

 and inductive syllogism are of equal significance in building up any body of 

 truth, and whoever restricts logic to either process, mistakes one-half of its 

 province for the whole ; and if he acts upon his error, will paralyze his meth 

 ods, and strike the noblest part of science with sterility. Ed. 



