216 



REASONING. 



enough. The only point to be determined is, whether the 

 authority which declared the general proposition, intended 

 to include this case in it ; and whether the legislator intended 

 his command to apply to the present case among others, or 

 not. This is ascertained by examining whether the case pos- 

 sesses the marks by which, as those authorities have signified, 

 the cases which they meant to certify or to influence may be 

 known. The object of the inquiry is to make out the wit- 

 ness's or the legislator's intention, through the indication 

 given by their words. This is a question, as the Germans 

 express it, of hermeneutics. The operation is not a process 

 of inference, but a process of interpretation. 



In this last phrase we have obtained an expression which 

 appears to me to characterize, more aptly than any other, the 

 functions of the syllogism in all cases. When the premises 

 are given by authority, the function of Reasoning is to ascer- 

 tain the testimony of a witness, or the will of a legislator, by 

 interpreting the signs in which the one has intimated his 

 assertion and the other his command. In like manner, when 

 the premises are derived from observation, the function of 

 Reasoning is to ascertain what we (or our predecessors) 

 formerly thought might be inferred from the observed facts, 

 and to do this by interpreting a memorandum of ours, or of 

 theirs. The memorandum reminds us, that from evidence, 

 more or less carefully weighed, it formerly appeared that a 

 certain attribute might be inferred wherever we perceive a 

 certain mark. The proposition, All men are mortal (for 

 instance) shows that we have had experience from which we 

 thought it followed that the attributes connoted by the term 

 man, are a mark of mortality. But when we conclude that 

 the Duke of Wellington is mortal, we do not infer this from 

 the memorandum, but from the former experience. All that 

 we infer from the memorandum is our own previous belief, 

 (or that of those who transmitted to us the proposition), con- 

 cerning the inferences which that former experience would 

 warrant. 



This view of the nature of the syllogism renders con- 

 sistent and intelligible what otherwise remains obscure and 



