NATURE AND CHARACTERISTICS OF INFERENCE 413 



facts embodied in indefinite (particular) or definite (singular or 

 general) judgments to another or other facts, or to universal 

 conclusions embodying those facts, without invoking mentally 

 some universal principle which connects all the facts, and some 

 self-evident axiom, of which the inference in question is an 

 application. 



(7) The universal judgment, which serves as axiom of a 

 mediate reasoning, or as universal premiss of a syllogism, is not a 

 mere &quot;concrete &quot;or &quot; collective &quot; universal which sums up facts 

 of sense experience. 



(8) The syllogism is itself a real process of inference : not a 

 mere record of the mental process by which its universal premiss 

 was reached. 



(9) This latter process is not simply a logical inference ; it is 

 a process of abstraction and generalization, i.e. the formation of 

 abstract and universal concepts and judgments ; sometimes subserved 

 by observation, experiment, analysis, hypothesis and inference : 

 in which cases it is called &quot; induction&quot;. 



(10) The conclusion of every real inference must be a new 

 truth, other than the premisses ; and yet it must be necessarily 

 involved in those premisses. This may be called a paradox, but 

 the two statements are not really incompatible. 



(n) Objectively, the reality revealed in the truth of the con 

 clusion is not posterior to, and consequent on, that revealed in 

 the truth of the premisses, but coexistent with, and implied in, 

 the latter. Subjectively, however, the knowledge of the conclusion 

 is not actually present in the knowledge of the premisses, but 

 only virtually so as to be necessarily derivable from this latter 

 by the exercise of the mental activity called &quot; reasoning&quot;. 



(12) The mistaken notion that the step from premisses to 

 conclusion, in a mediate inference, is trivial and unimportant, is 

 fostered by the simple and self-evident illustrations we meet with 

 in the logical treatment of the syllogism ; by forgetfulness of the 

 fact that all the mathematical and purely deductive sciences have 

 been built up by such inferences ; and of the fact that it is much 

 easier for us to follow a line of reasoning along which others 

 conduct us than it was for them to discover it for the first time. 



(i 3) The mistaken notion that the syllogism can prove nothing, 

 but is always and necessarily a petitio principii, rests upon a 

 deeper error about the nature and origin of the universal premiss : 

 the error, namely, that this premiss is a collective judgment, and is 



