136 REASONING. 



All men are mortal, 

 All kings are men, 



therefore 

 All kings are mortal, 



the minor premise asserts that the attributes denoted by kingship only 

 exist in conjunction with those signified by the word man. The major 

 asserts as before, that the last-mentioned attributes are never found without 

 the attribute of mortality. The conclusion is, that wherever the attributes 

 of kingship are found, that of mortality is found also. 



If the major premise were negative, as, No men are omnipotent, it would 

 assert, not that the attributes connoted by " man " never exist without, but 

 that they never exist with, those connoted by " omnipotent :" from which, 

 together with the minor premise, it is concluded, that the same incompati- 

 bility exists between the attribute omnipotence and those constituting a 

 king. In a similar manner we might analyze any other example of the 

 syllogism. 



If we generalize this process, and look out for the principle or law in- 

 volved in every such inference, and presupposed in every syllogism, the 

 propositions of which are any thing more than merely verbal; we find, not 

 the unmeaning dictum, de omni et nuUo, but a fundamental principle, or 

 rather two principles, strikingly resembling the axioms of mathematics. 

 The first, which is the principle of affirmative syllogisms, is, that things 

 which co-exist with the same thing, co-exist with one another: or (still more 

 precisely) a thing which co-exists with another thing, which other co-exists 

 with a third thing, also co-exists with that third thing. The second is the 

 principle of negative syllogisms, and is to this effect : that a thing which 

 co-exists with another thing, with which other a third thing does not co-ex- 

 ist, is not co-existent with that third thing. These axioms manifestly relate 

 to facts, and not to conventions ; and one or other of them is the ground of 

 the legitimacy of every argument in which facts and not conventions are 

 the matter treated of.* 



* Mr. Herbert Spencer (Principles of Psychology, pp. 125-7), though his theory of the syl- 

 logism coincides with all that is essential of mine, thinks it a logical fallacy to present the two 

 axioms in the text, as the regulating principles of syllogism. He charges me with falling 

 into the eiTor pointed out by Archbishop Whately and myself, of confounding exact likeness 

 with literal identity ; and maintains, that we ought not to say that Socrates possesses the 

 same attributes which are connoted by the word Man, but only that he possesses attributes 

 exactly like them : according to which phraseology, Socrates, and the attribute mortality, 

 are not two things co-existing with the same thing, as the axiom asserts, but two things co- 

 existing with two different things. 



The question between Mr. Spencer and me is merely one of language ; for neither of us (if 

 I understand Mr. Spencer's opinions rightly) believes an attribute to be a real thing, possessed 

 of objective existence; we believe it to be a particular mode of naming our sensations, or our 

 expectations of sensation, when looked at in tlieir relation to an external object which excites 

 them. The question raised by Mr. Spencer does not, therefore, concern the properties of any 

 really existing thing, but the comparative appropriateness, for philosophical purposes, of two 

 different modes of using a name. Considered in this point of view, the phraseology I have 

 employed, which is tliat commonly used by philosophers, seems to me to be the best. Mr. 

 Spencer is of opinion that because Socrates and Alcibiades are not the same man, the attri- 

 bute which constitutes them men should not be called the same attribute ; that because the 

 li;un mity of one man and that of another express themselves to our senses not by the same 

 individual sensations but by sensations exactly alike, humanity ought to be regarded as a dif- 

 f^irent attribute in every different man. But on this showing, the humanity even of any one 

 man should be considered as different attributes now and half an hour hence ; for the sensa- 

 tions by which it will then manifest itself to my organs will not be a continuation of my pres- 

 ent sensations, but a repetition of tliem ; fresh sensations, not identical with, but only exactly 



