FUNCTIONS AND VALUE OF THE SYLLOGISM. 223 



with the philosophical character of the syllogism, it is requi 

 site to consider, since the syllogism is not the universal type 

 of the reasoning process, what is the real type. This resolves 

 itself into the question, what is the nature of the minor pre 

 mise, and in what manner it contributes to establish the con 

 clusion : for as to the major, we now fully understand, that 

 the place which it nominally occupies in our reasonings, 

 properly belongs to the individual facts or observations of 

 which it expresses the general result; the major itself being 

 no real part of the argument, but an intermediate halting- 

 place for the mind, interposed by an artifice of language 

 between the real premises and the conclusion, by way of a 

 security, which it is in a most material degree, for the cor 

 rectness of the process. The minor, however, being an indis 

 pensable part of the syllogistic expression of an argument, 

 without doubt either is, or corresponds to, an equally indis 

 pensable part of the argument itself, and we have only to 

 inquire what part. 



It is perhaps worth while to notice here a speculation 

 of a philosopher to whom mental science is much indebted, 

 but who, though a very penetrating, was a very hasty 

 thinker, and whose want of due circumspection rendered him 

 fully as remarkable for what he did not see, as for what he 

 saw. I allude to Dr. Thomas Brown, whose theory of ratio 

 cination is peculiar. He saw the petitio principii which is 

 inherent in every syllogism, if we consider the major to be 

 itself the evidence by which the conclusion is proved, instead of 

 being, what in fact it is, an assertion of the existence of 

 evidence sufficient to prove any conclusion of a given descrip 

 tion. Seeing this, Dr. Brown not only failed to see the 

 immense advantage, in point of security for correctness, which 

 is gained by interposing this step between the real evidence 

 and the conclusion ; but he thought it incumbent on him to 

 strike out the major altogether from the reasoning process, 

 without substituting anything else, and maintained that our 

 reasonings consist only of the minor premise and the conclu 

 sion, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal : thus 

 actually suppressing, as an unnecessary step in the argument, 



