FUNCTIONS AND VALUE OF THE SYLLOGISM. 205 



to perceive and acknowledge the full force of that which he 

 has admitted,&quot; he does not, I think, meet the real difficulty re 

 quiring to be explained, namely, how it happens that a science, 

 like geometry, can be all &quot; wrapt up &quot; in a few definitions and 

 axioms. Nor does this defence of the syllogism differ much 

 from what its assailants urge against it as an accusation, 

 when they charge it with being of no use except to those who 

 seek to press the consequences of an admission into which a 

 person has been entrapped without having considered and 

 understood its full force. When you admitted the major 

 premise, you asserted the conclusion ; but, says Archbishop 

 Whately, you asserted it by implication merely : this, how 

 ever, can here only mean that you asserted it unconsciously ; 

 that you did not know you were asserting it ; but, if so, the 

 difficulty revives in this shape Ought you not to have 

 known ? Were you warranted in asserting the general pro 

 position without having satisfied yourself of the truth of 

 everything which it fairly includes ? And if not, is not the 

 syllogistic art primd facie what its assailants affirm it to be, 

 a contrivance for catching you in a trap, and holding you 

 fast in it ?* 



3. From this difficulty there appears to be but one 

 issue. The proposition that the Duke of Wellington is 

 mortal, is evidently an inference ; it is got at as a conclusion 



* It is hardly necessary to say, that I am not contending for any such 

 absurdity as that we actually &quot;ought to have known&quot; and considered the case 

 of every individual man, past, present, and future, before affirming that all men 

 are mortal : although this interpretation has been, strangely enough, put upon 

 the preceding observations. There is no difference between me and Archbishop 

 Whately, or any other defender of the syllogism, on the practical part of the 

 matter ; I am only pointing out an inconsistency in the logical theory of it, as 

 conceived by almost all writers. I do not say that a person who affirmed, be 

 fore the Duke of Wellington was born, that all men are mortal, knew that the 

 Duke of Wellington was mortal ; but I do say that he asserted it ; and I ask 

 for an explanation of the apparent logical fallacy, of adducing in proof of the 

 Duke of Wellington s mortality, a general statement which presupposes it. 

 Finding no sufficient resolution of this difficulty in any of the writers on Logic, 

 I have attempted to supply one. 



