148 REASONING. 



This view of the nature of the syllogism renders consistent and intel- 

 ligible what otherwise remains obscure and confused in the theory of 

 Archbishop Whately and other enlightened defenders of the syllogistic 

 doctrine, respecting the limits to which its functions are confined. They 

 affirm in as explicit terms as can be used, that the sole office of general 

 reasoning is to prevent inconsistency in our opinions ; to prevent us from 

 assenting to any thing, the truth of which would contradict something to 

 which we had previously on good grounds given our assent. And they 

 tell us, that the sole ground which a syllogism affords for assenting to the 

 conclusion, is that the supposition of its being false, combined with the 

 supposition that the premises are true, would lead to a contradiction in 

 terms. Now this would be but a lame account of the real grounds which 

 we have for believing the facts which we learn from reasoning, in contra- 

 distinction to observation. The true reason why we believe that the Duke 

 of Wellington will die, is that his fathers, and our fathers, and all other 

 persons who were contemporary with them, have died. Those facts are the 

 real premises of the reasoning. But we are not led to infer the conclusion 

 from those premises, by the necessity of avoiding any verbal inconsistency. 

 There is no contradiction in supposing that all those persons have died, 

 and that the Duke of Wellington may, notwithstanding, live forever. But 

 there would be a contradiction if we first, on the ground of those same 

 premises, made a general assertion including and covering the case of the 

 Duke of Wellington, and then refused to stand to it in the individual case. 

 There is an inconsistency to be avoided between the memorandum we 

 make of the inferences which may be justly drawn in future cases, and 

 the inferences we actually draw in those cases when they arise. With 

 this view we interpret our own formula, precisely as a judge interprets a 

 law : in order that we may avoid drawing any inferences not conformable 

 to our former intention, as a judge avoids giving any decision not conform- 

 able to the legislator's intention. The rules for this interpretation are the 

 rules of the syllogism : and its sole purpose is to maintain consistency be- 

 tween the conclusions we draw in every particular case, and the previoiis 

 general directions for drawing them; whether those general directions 

 were framed by ourselves as the result of induction, or were received 

 by us from an authority competent to give them. 



§ 5. In the above observations it has, I think, been shown, that, though 

 there is always a process of reasoning or inference where a syllogism is 

 used, the syllogism is not a correct analysis of that process of reasoning or 

 inference ; which is, on the contrary (when not a mere inference from tes- 

 timony), an inference from particulars to particulars ; authorized by a pre- 

 vious inference from particulars to generals, and substantially the same with 

 it ; of the nature, therefore, of Induction. But while these conclusions ap- 

 pear to me undeniable, I must yet enter a protest, as strong as that of Arch- 

 bishop Whately himself, against the doctrine that the syllogistic art is use- 

 less for the purposes of reasoning. The reasoning lies in the act of gener- 

 alization, not in interpreting the record of that act ; but the syllogistic form 

 is an indispensable collateral security for the correctness of the generaliza- 

 tion itself. 



It has already been seen, that if we have a collection of particulars suffi- 

 cient for grounding an induction, Ave need not frame a general proposition; 

 we may reason at once from those particulars to other particulars. But it 

 is to be remarked withal, that whenever, from a set of particular cases, we 

 can legitimately draw any inference, we may legitimately make our infer- 



