FUNCTIONS AND VALUE OF THE SYLLOGISM. 209 



judge from an enlarged consideration of the manner in which 

 human beings in general, or persons of some particular cha- 

 racter, are accustomed to feel and act ; but much oftener from 

 merely recollecting the feelings and conduct of the same 

 person in some previous instance, or from considering how we 

 should feel or act ourselves. It is not only the village 

 matron, who, when called to a consultation upon the case of 

 a neighbour's child, pronounces on the evil and its remedy 

 simply on the recollection and authority of what she accounts 

 the similar case of her Lucy. We all, where we have no 

 definite maxims to steer by, guide ourselves in the same 

 way : and if we have an extensive experience, and retain its 

 impressions strongly, we may acquire in this manner a very 

 considerable power of accurate judgment, which we may be 

 utterly incapable of justifying or of communicating to others. 

 Among the higher order of practical intellects there have 

 been many of whom it was remarked how admirably they 

 suited their means to their ends, without being able to give 

 any sufficient reasons for what they did ; and applied, or 

 seemed to apply, recondite principles which they were 

 wholly unable to state. This is a natural consequence of 

 having a mind stored with appropriate particulars, and 

 having been long accustomed to reason at once from these 

 to fresh particulars, without practising the habit of stating to 

 oneself or to others the corresponding general propositions. 

 An old warrior, on a rapid glance at the outlines of the 

 ground, is able at once to give the necessary orders for a 

 skilful arrangement of his troops ; though if he has received 

 little theoretical instruction, and has seldom been called 

 upon to answer to other people for his conduct, he may 

 never have had in his mind a single general theorem 

 respecting the relation between ground and array. But his 

 experience of encampments, in circumstances more or less 

 similar, has left a number of vivid, unexpressed, ungeneral- 

 ized analogies in his mind, the most appropriate of which, 

 instantly suggesting itself, determines him to a judicious 

 arrangement. 



The skill of an uneducated person in the use of weapons, 

 VOL. i. ;U 



