152 REASONING. 



out substituting any thing else, and maintained that ouv reasonings consist 

 only of the minor premise and the conclusion, Socrates is a man, therefore 

 Socrates is mortal : thus actually suppressing, as an unnecessary step in 

 the argument, the ajjpeal to former experience. The absurdity of this was 

 disguised from him by the opinion he adopted, that reasoning is merely an- 

 alyzing our own general notions, or abstract ideas ; and that the proposi- 

 tion, Socrates is mortal, is evolved from the proposition, Socrates is a man, 

 simply by recognizing the notion of mortality as already contained in the 

 notion we form of a man. 



After the explanations so fully entered into on the subject of proposi- 

 tions, much further discussion can not be necessary to make the radical 

 error of this view of ratiocination apparent. If the word man connoted 

 mortality ; if the meaning of " mortal " were involved in the meaning of 

 " man ;" we might, undoubtedly, evolve the conclusion from the minor 

 alone, because the minor would have already asserted it. But if, as is in 

 fact the case, the word man does not connote mortality, how does it appear 

 that in the mind of every person who admits Socrates to be a man, the 

 idea of man must include the idea of mortality? Dr. Brown could not 

 help seeing this difficulty, and in order to avoid it, was led, contrary to his 

 intention, to re-establish, under another name, that step in the argument 

 which corresponds to the major, by affirming the necessity of previously 

 perceiving the relation between the idea of man and the idea of mortal. If 

 the reasoner has not previously perceived this relation, he will not, says Dr. 

 Brown, infer because Socrates is a man, that Socrates is mortal. But even 

 this admission, though amounting to a surrender of the doctrine that an 

 argument consists of the minor and the conclusion alone, will not save the 

 remainder of Dr. Brown's theory. The failure of assent to the argument 

 does not take place merely because the reasoner, for want of due analysis, 

 does not perceive that his idea of man includes the idea of mortality; it 

 takes place, much more commonly, because in his mind that relation be- 

 tween the two ideas has never existed. And in truth it never does exist, 

 except as the result of experience. Consenting, for the sake of the argu- 

 ment, to discuss the question on a supposition of which we have recog- 

 nized the radical incorrectness, namely, that the meaning of a proposition 

 relates to the ideas of the things spoken of, and not to the things them- 

 selves ; I must yet observe, that the idea of man, as a universal idea, the 

 common property of all rational creatures, can not involve any thing but 

 what is strictly implied in the name. If any one includes in his own pri- 

 vate idea of man, as no doubt is always the case, some other attributes, such 

 for instance as mortality, he does so only as the consequence of experience, 

 after having satisfied himself that all men possess that attribute : so that 

 whatever the idea contains, in any person's mind, beyond what is included 

 in the conventional signification of the word, has been added to it as the 

 result of assent to a proposition ; while Dr. Brown's theory requires us to 

 suppose, on the contrary, that assent to the proposition is produced by 

 evolving, through an analytic process, this very element out of the idea. 

 This theory, therefore, may be considered as sufficiently refuted ; and the 

 minor premise must be regarded as totally insufficient to pi'ove the conclu- 

 sion, except with the assistance of the major, or of that which the major 

 represents, namely, the various singular propositions expressive of the se- 

 ries of observations, of which the generalization called the major premise is 

 the result. 



In the argument, then, wliich proves that Socrates is mortal, one indis- 



