EATIOCINATION, OR SYLLOGISM. 137 



§ 4. It remains to translate this exposition of the syllogism from the 

 one into the other of the two languages in which we formerly remarked* 

 that all propositions, and of course therefore all combinations of proposi- 

 tions, might be expressed. We observed that a proposition might be con- 

 sidered in two different lights; as a portion of our knowledge of nature, 

 or as a memorandum for our guidance. Under the former, or speculative 

 aspect, an affirmative general proposition is an assertion of a speculative 

 truth, viz., that whatever has a certain attribute has a certain other attribute. 

 Under the other aspect, it is to be regarded not as a part of our knowledge, 

 but as an aid for our practical exigencies, by enabling us, when we see or 

 learn that an object possesses one of the two attributes, to infer that it pos- 

 sesses the other ; thus employing the first attribute as a mark or evidence 

 of the second. Thus regarded, every syllogism comes within the following 

 general formula : 



Attribute A is a mark of attribute B, 



The given object has the mark A, 

 therefore 



The given object has the attribute B. 



Referred to this type, the arguments which we have lately cited as 

 specimens of the syllogism, will express themselves in the following 

 manner : 



The attributes of man are a mark of the attribute mortality, 

 Socrates has the attributes of man, 



therefore 

 Socrates has the attribute mortality. 



like the present. If every general conception, instead of being "the One in the Many," were 

 considered to be as many different conceptions as there are things to which it is applicable, 

 there would be no such thing as general language. A name would have no general meaning 

 if man connoted one thing when predicated of John, and another, though closely resembling, 

 thing when predicated of William. Accordingly a recent pamphlet asserts the impossibility 

 of general knowledge on this precise ground. 



The meaning of any general name is some outward or inward phenomenon, consisting, in 

 the last resort, of feelings ; and these feelings, if their continuity is for an instant broken, are 

 no longer the same feelings, in the sense of individual identity. What, then, is the common 

 something which gives a meaning to the general name ? Mr. Spencer can only say, it is the 

 similarity of the feelings ; and I rejoin, the attribute is precisely that similarity. The names 

 of attributes are in their ultimate analysis names for the resemblances of our sensations (or 

 other feelings). Every general name, whether abstract or concrete, denotes orv^onnotes one 

 or more of those resemblances. It will not, probably, be denied, that if a hundred sensations 

 are undistinguishably alike, their resemblance ought to be spoken of as one resemblance, and 

 not a hundred resemblances which merely resemble one another. The things compared are 

 many, but the something common to all of them must be conceived as one, just as the name 

 is conceived as one, though corresponding to numerically different sensations of sound each 

 time it is pronoimced. The general term vian does not connote the sensations derived once 

 from one man, which, once gone, can no more occur again than the same flash of light- 

 ning. It connotes the general type of the sensations derived always from all men, and the 

 power (always thought of as one) of producing sensations of that type. And the axiom 

 might be thus worded : Two types of sensation each of which co-exists with a third type, 

 co-exist with another ; or Two powers each of which co-exists with a third power co-exist 

 with one another. 



Mr. Spencer has misunderstood me in another particular. He supposes that the co-exist- 

 ence spoken of in the axiom, of two things with the same third thing, means simultaneousness 

 in time. The co-existence meant is that of being jointly attributes of the same subject. The 

 attribute of being born without teeth, and the attribute of having thirty-two teeth in mature 

 age, are in this sense go-existent, both being attrikiHteS of man, though ex vi termini never of 

 the same man at the same tim8. 



* Supra, p. 93. , 



