268 THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC 



elements, however, doubt and inference, either may, in a given 

 judgment, almost entirely overshadow the other. When the ele 

 ment of doubt is present it falls, of course, not on the connexion 

 between the consequent and the antecedent, but on the actual 

 happening or occurrence of the latter} In the case of conditionals 

 it is certainly the inferential element the connexion of conse 

 quent with antecedent that is primarily asserted. The element 

 of doubt about the occurrence of the antecedent is only secondary 

 and incidental. At the same time, it is rarely, if ever, altogether 

 absent when &quot; If&quot; is used At all events, when we want to imply 

 that we have no doubt about the existence of the antecedent we 

 usually substitute the word &quot;Since&quot;. The &quot; hypothesis of in 

 ference,&quot; as it is called, is not appropriately introduced by If&quot;. 

 The doubt insinuated in the remark of Colonel Morden in Clarissa 

 Harlowe : &quot; If you have the regard for my cousin which you say 

 you have, you must admit,&quot; etc. provoked the anger of Love 

 lace, notwithstanding the colonel s assurance &quot;that his if pre 

 faced a conclusion and did not necessarily suggest a doubt. . . . 

 Had Colonel Morden really felt no doubt about the existence of 

 the regard he would surely have prefaced his sentence with a 

 since instead of an if &quot;. 2 If the latter word does not always 

 imply, it always suggests, some doubt about the antecedent, or, 

 at the very least, leaves its occurrence an open question. This is 

 true, too, of the various substitutes for &quot;if&quot; in conditional pro 

 positions, &quot;Whenever&quot; &quot; Wherever&quot; &quot;As often as&quot; etc. Per 

 haps the most that can be said of these is that they do not 

 necessarily imply the occurrence of their antecedents. 



Dr. Venn contends, further, that they always imply a doubt at least as to 

 whether the antecedent in the given case belongs to the class of things which in 

 volve the consequent. Taking the example : &quot;If (when, where}, the husband 

 is a drunkard, the home is a wretched one,&quot; 3 he points out that &quot; there is a con 

 nexion asserted between antecedent and consequent, the drunkenness and 

 the squalor, and a doubt implied about its occurrence in certain cases . . . 

 any husband taken at random might or might not fit the designation. . . .&quot; 

 To this he likens all examples taken from geometry, examples in which the 

 element of doubt about the occurrence of the antecedent seems at first sight 

 to be entirely absent. The doubt is there, he maintains, and it falls upon 

 this point : whether a given instance will really have the necessary charac 

 teristics for membership of the class of things that involve the consequent ; 

 whether, for instance, &quot; the learner with his ruler, compass, and paper before 

 him &quot; 4 will inscribe a triangle in a semi-circle, or draw a straight line 



1 Cf- JOSEPH, op. cit., p. 315. a VENN, op. cit., pp, 262, 263. 



s ibid., pp. 255, 263. 4 ibid., p. 263. 



