RATIOCINATION, OR SYLLOGISM. 237 



the later Kantians, has never ceased to poison philo- 

 sophy. Once accustomed to consider scientific inves- 

 tigation as essentially consisting in the study of 

 universals, men did not drop this habit of thought 

 when they ceased to regard universals as possessing 

 an independent existence : and even those who went 

 the length of considering them as mere names, could 

 not free themselves from the notion that the investi- 

 gation of truth consisted entirely or partly in some 

 kind of conjuration or juggle with those names. When 

 a philosopher adopted fully the Nominalist view of 

 the signification of general language, retaining along 

 with it the dictum de omni as the foundation of all 

 reasoning, two such premisses fairly put together were 

 likely, if he was a consistent thinker, to land him in 

 rather startling conclusions. Accordingly it has been 

 seriously held, by writers of deserved celebrity,, that 

 the process of arriving at new truths by reasoning 

 consists in the mere substitution of one set of arbi- 

 trary signs for another ; a doctrine which they sup- 

 posed to derive irresistible confirmation from the 

 example of algebra. If there were any process in 

 sorcery or necromancy more preternatural than this, 

 I should be much surprised. The culminating point 

 of this philosophy is the noted aphorism of Condillac, 

 that a science is nothing, or scarcely anything, but 

 une langue bien faite : in other words, that the one 

 sufficient rule for discovering the nature and proper- 

 ties of objects is to name them properly : as if the 

 reverse were not the truth, that it is impossible to 

 name them properly except in proportion as we are 

 already acquainted with their nature and properties. 

 Can it be necessary to say, that none, not even the 

 most trivial knowledge with respect to Things, ever 



