FUNCTIONS AND VALUE OF THE SYLLOGISxM. 151 



from habit, after it has outgrown any liability to be misled by similar falla- 

 cious appearances if they were now for the first time presented ; but hav- 

 ing forgotten the particulars, it does not think of revising its own former 

 decision. An inevitable drawback, which, however considerable in itself, 

 forms evidently but a small set-off against the immense benefits of general 

 language. 



The use of the syllogism is in truth no other than the use of general 

 propositions in reasoning. We can reason without them ; in simple and 

 obvious cases we habitually do so; minds of great sagacity can do it in 

 cases not simple and obvious, provided their experience supplies them with 

 instances essentially similar to every combination of circumstances likely 

 to arise. But other minds, and the same minds where they have not the 

 same pre-eminent advantages of pei'sonal experience, are quite helpless 

 without the aid of general propositions, wherever the case presents the 

 smallest complication ; and if we made no general propositions, few per- 

 sons would get much beyond those simple inferences which are drawn by 

 the more intelligent of the brutes. Though not necessary to reasoning, 

 general propositions are necessary to any considerable progress in reason- 

 ing. It is, therefore, natural and indispensable to separate the process of 

 investigation into two parts; and obtain general formulae for determining 

 what inferences may be drawn, before the occasion arises for drawing the 

 inferences. The work of drawing them is then that of applying the for- 

 mulae ; and the rules of syllogism are a system of securities for the correct- 

 ness of the application. 



§ 6. To complete the series of considerations connected with the philo- 

 sophical character of the syllogism, it is requisite to consider, since the syl- 

 logism is not the universal type of the reasoning process, what is the real 

 type. This resolv-es itself into the question, what is the nature of the mi- 

 nor premise, and in what manner it contributes to establish the conclusion : 

 for as to the major, we now fully understand, that the place which it nom- 

 inally occupies in our reasonings, properly belongs to the individual facts 

 or observations of which it expresses the general result; the major itself 

 being no real part of the argument, but an intermediate halting-place for 

 the mind, interposed by an artifice of language between the real premises 

 and the conclusion, by way of a security, which it is in a most material de- 

 gree, for the correctness of the process. The minor, however, being an in- 

 dispensable part of the syllogistic expression of an argument, without 

 doubt either is, or corresponds to, an equally indispensable part of the ar- 

 gument itself, and we have only to inquire what part. 



It is perhaps worth while to notice here a speculation of a philosopher 

 to whom mental science is much indebted, but who, though a very pene- 

 trating, Avas a very hasty thinker, and whose want of due circumspection 

 rendered him fully as remarkable for what he did not see, as for what he 

 saw. I allude to Dr. Thomas Brown, whose theory of ratiocination is pe- 

 culiar. He saw the petitio principii which is inherent in every syllogism, 

 if we consider the major to be itself the evidence by which the conclusion 

 is proved, instead of being, what in fact it is, an assertion of the existence 

 of evidence sufficient to pi'ove any conclusion of a given description. See- 

 ing this, Dr. Brown not only failed to see the immense advantage, in point 

 of security for correctness, which is gained by interposing this step be- 

 tween the real evidence and the conclusion ; but he thought it incumbent 

 on him to strike out the major altogether from the reasoning process, with- 



