DEFINITION. 163 



This proposition, considered only as a definition, is indis- 

 putably correct. A dragon is a serpent breathing flame : the 

 word means that. The tacit assumption, indeed, (if there were 

 any such understood assertion), of the existence of an object 

 with properties corresponding to the definition, would, in the 

 present instance, be false. Out of this definition we may carve 

 the premises of the following syllogism : 



A dragon is a thing which breathes flame : 

 A dragon is a serpent : 

 From which the conclusion is, 



Therefore some serpent or serpents breathe flame : 

 an unexceptionable syllogism in the first mode of the third 

 figure, in which both premises are true and yet the conclusion 

 false ; which every logician knows to be an absurdity. The 

 conclusion being false and the syllogism correct, the premises 

 cannot be true. But the premises, considered as parts of a 

 definition, are true. Therefore, the premises considered as 

 parts of a definition cannot be the real ones. The real pre 

 mises must be 



A dragon is a really existing thing which breathes flame : 



A dragon is a really existing serpent : 



which implied premises being false, the falsity of the conclu- 

 sion presents no absurdity. 



If we would determine what conclusion follows from the 

 same ostensible premises when the tacit assumption of real 

 existence is left out, let us, according to the recommendation 

 in a previous page, substitute means for is. We then have 



Dragon is a word meaning a thing which breathes flame : 



Dragon is a word meaning a serpent : 

 From which the conclusion is, 



Some word or words which mean a serpent, also mean 



a thing which breathes flame : 



where the conclusion (as well as the premises) is true, and 

 is the only kind of conclusion which can ever follow from a 

 definition, namely, a proposition relating to the meaning of 

 words. 



There is still another shape into which we may transform 

 this syllogism. We may suppose the middle term to be the 



112 



