302 THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC 



reason for universalizing such propositions lies in our apprehension 

 of a necessary relation between the intension of their predicates 

 and the intenison of their subjects ; that, consequently, even when 

 such propositions are mterpcztedpredicatively, and their subjects 

 thought of as classes, they presuppose, as more fundamental, the 

 connotative or imp licational view, in which we compare the attribute 

 P with the attributes implied by the subject, M (102). 



All this is presupposed, and indeed necessarily involved, in the Aristotelean 

 view of the syllogism as a real process of inference from a general law to 

 the particular application of the same. The intension of the middle term 

 must be compared with that of the major extreme, at least antecedently to 

 the formulation of the major premiss as a universal, and as a ground of its 

 universalization, if not actually and formally in the statement of the major 

 premiss in the syllogism itself. We therefore pass, in syllogistic reasoning, 

 from considering the intension, to considering the extension, of the middle 

 term. It cannot be maintained, then, that the Aristotelean view of the 

 syllogism is based exclusively on the extension of the concepts compared. 



Some logicians suggest a modification of the Aristotelean Dictum, which 

 would bring out more clearly the dependence of the syllogistic process on 

 the intension, as well as on the extension, of the middle term. The major 

 premiss, they suggest, should be read not predicatively, but connotatively. 

 This would be an improvement ; for it would at the same time show us 

 wherein exactly lies the forward step, or advance, of thought, which consti 

 tutes the syllogism a genuine inference : namely, in the transition from the 

 intension of M in the major premiss to its extension in the minor premiss, 

 where it is formally universalized. &quot; In our opinion,&quot; writes Cardinal 

 Mercier, &quot; the logical connexion between premisses and conclusion demands 

 that the terms should be simultaneously considered from both points of view 

 the extensive and the comprehensive. The predicate of the conclusion, 

 forming part of the comprehension of an abstract term which contains in its 

 extension the subject of the conclusion, may be definitely predicated of this 

 subject.&quot; 



&quot; In the major premiss, the major extreme is considered in its relation of 

 comprehension to the middle term ; in the minor premiss the same middle 

 term is considered from ihe point of view of its extension, and put into a re 

 lation of extension with the minor extreme.&quot; 



&quot; In passing from the major premiss, where the middle term is considered 

 in its abstract comprehension, to the minor premiss, where its extension is 

 considered in relation to its inferiors [sub-classes or individuals], a dis 

 tinct work of thought has been accomplished : the universalization of the 

 abstract type.&quot; J 



. . . &quot;Reasoning [syllogistically] is placing some definite subject under 

 the extension of an abstract type in order to infer that something which is 

 predicable of the abstract type as such is similarly predicable of the definite 

 subject.&quot; &amp;lt;i 



1 Logique (4th edit., Louvain, 1905), pp. 184-5. Cf- JOSEPH, op. cit., p. 284. 

 *ibid. t p. 182. 



