150 REASONING. 



supposed to be analogous, it is always possible, and generally advantageous, 

 to divert our argument into the circuitous channel of an induction from 

 those known cases to a general proposition, and a subsequent application 

 of that general proposition to the unknown case. This second part of the 

 operation, which, as before observed, is essentially a process of interpreta- 

 tion, will be resolvable into a syllogism or a series of syllogisms, the majors 

 of which will be general propositions embracing whole classes of cases ; 

 every one of which propositions must be true in all its extent, if the argu- 

 ment is maintainable. If, therefore, any fact fairly coming within the 

 range of one of these general propositions, and consequently asserted by it, 

 is known or suspected to be other than the proposition asserts it to be, this 

 mode of stating the argument causes us to know or to suspect that the 

 original observations, which are the real grounds of our conclusion, are not 

 sufficient to support it. And in proportion to the greater chance of our 

 detecting the inconclusiveness of our evidence, will be the increased reli- 

 ance Ave are entitled to place in it if no such evidence of defect shall appear. 



The value, therefore, of the syllogistic form, and of the rules for using it 

 correctly, does not consist in their being the form and the rules according 

 to which our reasonings are necessarily, or even usually, made ; but in their 

 furnishing us with a mode in which those reasonings may always be repre- 

 sented, and which is admirably calculated, if they are inconclusive, to bring 

 their inconclusiveness to light. An induction from particulars to generals, 

 followed by a syllogistic process from those generals to other particulars, is 

 a form in which we may always state our reasonings if we please. It is 

 not a form in which we must reason, but it is a form in which we may rea- 

 son, and into which it is indispensable to throw our reasoning, when thei'e 

 is any doubt of its validity : though when the case is familiar and little 

 complicated, and there is no suspicion of error, we may, and do, reason at 

 once from the known particular cases to unknown ones.* 



These are the uses of syllogism, as a mode of verifying any given argu- 

 ment. Its ulterior uses, as respects the general course of our intellectual 

 operations, hardly require illustration, being in fact the acknowledged uses 

 of general language. They amount substantially to this, that the induc- 

 tions may be made once for all : a single careful interrogation of experi- 

 ence may suffice, and the result may be registered in the form of a general 

 proposition, which is committed to memory or to writing, and from which 

 afterward we have only to syllogize. The particulars of our experiments 

 may then be dismissed from the memory, in which it would be impossible 

 to retain so great a multitude of details ; while the knowledge which those 

 details afforded for future use, and which would otherwise be lost as soon 

 as the observations were forgotten, or as their record became too bulky for 

 reference, is retained in a commodious and immediately available shape by 

 means of general language. 



Against this advantage is to be set the countervailing inconvenience, that 

 inferences originally made on insufficient evidence become consecrated, and, 

 as it were, hardened into general maxims ; and the mind cleaves to them 



* The language of ratiocination would, I think, be brought into closer agreement with the 

 real nature of the process, if the general propositions employed in reasoning, instead of being 

 in tlie form All men are mortal, or Every man is mortal, were expressed in the form Any 

 man is mortal. This mode of expression, exhibiting as the type of all reasoning from expe- 

 rience "The men A, B, C, etc., are so and so, therefore any man is so and so," would much 

 better manifest the true idea — that inductive reasoning is always, at bottom, inference from 

 particulars to particulars, and that the whole function of general propositions in reasoning, is 

 to vouch for the legitimacy of such inferences. 



