FUNCTIONS AND VALUE OF THE SYLLOGISM. 233 



sion, jEquipollence, and Opposition ; of those falsely called 

 Inductions (to be hereafter spoken of*), in which the apparent 

 generalization is a mere abridged statement of cases known 

 individually ; and finally, of the syllogism : while the theory 

 of Naming, and of (what is inseparably connected with it) 

 Definition, though belonging still more to the other and larger 

 kind of logic than to this, is a necessary preliminary to this. 

 The end aimed at by Formal Logic, and attained by the ob- 

 servance of its precepts, is not truth, but consistency. It has 

 been seen that this is the only direct purpose of the rules of 

 the syllogism ; the intention and effect of which is simply to 

 keep our inferences or conclusions in complete consistency 

 with our general formulas or directions for drawing them. The 

 Logic of Consistency is a necessary auxiliary to the logic of 

 truth, not only because what is inconsistent with itself or with 

 other truths cannot be true, but also because truth can only 

 be successfully pursued by drawing inferences from experience, 

 which, if warrantable at all, admit of being generalized, and, 

 to test their warrantableness, require to be exhibited in a gene- 

 ralized form ; after which the correctness of their application 

 to particular cases is a question which specially concerns the 

 Logic of Consistency. This Logic, not requiring any pre- 

 liminary knowledge of the processes or conclusions of the 

 various sciences, may be studied with benefit in a much earlier 

 stage of education than the Logic of Truth : and the practice 

 which has empirically obtained of teaching it apart, through 

 elementary treatises which do not attempt to include anything 

 else, though the reasons assigned for the practice are in 

 general very far from philosophical, admits of a philosophical 

 justification. 



* Infra, book iii. ch. ii. 



