FUNCTIONS AND VALUE OF THE SYLLOGISM. 215 



For this it is essential that we should read the record correctly : 

 and the rules of the syllogism are a set of precautions to ensure 

 our doing so. 



This view of the functions of the syllogism is confirmed 

 by the consideration of precisely those cases which might be 

 expected to be least favourable to it, namely, those in which 

 ratiocination is independent of any previous induction. We 

 have already observed that the syllogism, in the ordinary 

 course of our reasoning, is only the latter half of the process 

 of travelling from premises to a conclusion. There are, how- 

 ever, some peculiar cases in which it is the whole process. 

 Particulars alone are capable of being subjected to observation ; 

 and all knowledge which is derived from observation, begins, 

 therefore, of necessity, in particulars ; but our knowledge may, 

 in cases of certain descriptions, be conceived as coming to us 

 from other sources than observation. It may present itself as 

 coming from testimony, which, on the occasion and for the 

 purpose in hand, is accepted as of an authoritative character : 

 and the information thus communicated, may be conceived to 

 comprise not only particular facts but general propositions, as 

 when a scientific doctrine is accepted without examination on 

 the authority of writers, or a theological doctrine on that of 

 Scripture. Or the generalization may not be, in the ordinary 

 sense, an assertion at all, but a command ; a law, not in the 

 philosophical, but in the moral and political sense of the term : 

 an expression of the desire of a superior, that we, or any 

 number of other persons, shall conform our conduct to certain 

 general instructions. So far as this asserts a fact, namely, a 

 volition of the legislator, that fact is an individual fact, and the 

 proposition, therefore, is not a general proposition. But the 

 description therein contained of the conduct which it is the 

 will of the legislator that his subjects should observe, is general. 

 The proposition asserts, not that all men are anything, but 

 that all men shall do something. 



In both these cases the generalities are the original data, 

 and the particulars are elicited from them by a process which 

 correctly resolves itself into a series of syllogisms. The real 

 nature, however, of the supposed deductive process, is evident 



