FUNCTIONS AND VALUE OF THE SYLLOGISM. 221 



rules for using it correctly, does not consist in their being 

 the form and the rules according to which our reasonings 

 are necessarily, or even usually, made ; but in their furnishing 

 us with a mode in which those reasonings may always be 

 represented, and which is admirably calculated, if they are 

 inconclusive, to bring their inconclusiveness to light. An 

 induction from particulars to generals, followed by a syllo 

 gistic process from those generals to other particulars, is a 

 form in which we may always state our reasonings if we 

 please. It is not a form in which we must reason, but it is 

 a form in which we may reason, and into which it is indis 

 pensable to throw our reasoning, when there is any doubt of 

 its validity : though when the case is familiar and little com 

 plicated, and there is no suspicion of error, we may, and do, 

 reason at once from the known particular cases to unknown 

 ones.* 



These are the uses of syllogism, as a mode of verifying 

 any given argument. Its ulterior uses, as respects the general 

 course of our intellectual operations, hardly require illustra 

 tion, being in fact the acknowledged uses of general language. 

 They amount substantially to this, that the inductions may 

 be made once for all : a single careful interrogation of expe 

 rience may suffice, and the result may be registered in the 

 form of a general proposition, which is committed to memory 

 or to writing, and from which afterwards we have only to 

 syllogize. The particulars of our experiments may then be 

 dismissed from the memory, in which it would be impossible 

 to retain so great a multitude of details ; while the knowledge 

 which those details afforded for future use, and which would 

 otherwise be lost as soon as the observations were forgotten, 



* The language of ratiocination would, I think, be brought into closer agree 

 ment with the real nature of the process, if the general propositions employed 

 in reasoning, instead of being iu the form All men are mortal, or Every man is 

 mortal, were expresse I in the form Any man is mortal. This mode of expression, 

 exhibiting as the type of all reasoning from experience &quot;The men A, B, C &c. 

 are so and so, therefore any man is so and so,&quot; would much better manifest the 

 true idea that inductive reasoning is always, at bottom, inference from par 

 ticulars to particulars, and that the whole function of general propositions in 

 reasoning, is to vouch for the legitimacy of such inferences. 



