FUNCTIONS AND VALUE OF THE SYLLOGISM. 247 



admits of being exhibited in the following syllo- 

 gism : 



All men are mortal 

 The Duke of Wellington is a man 



therefore 

 The Duke of Wellington is mortal. 



And since a large portion of our knowledge is thus 

 acquired, logicians have persisted in representing the 

 syllogism as a process of inference or proof; although 

 none of them has cleared up the difficulty which 

 arises from the inconsistency between that assertion 

 and the principle, that if there be anything in the 

 conclusion which was not already asserted in the 

 premisses, the argument is vicious. For it is impos- 

 sible to attach any serious scientific value to such a 

 mere salvo, as the distinction drawn between being 

 involved by implication in the premisses, and being 

 directly asserted in them. When Archbishop Whately, 

 for example, says*, that the object of reasoning is 

 " merely to expand and unfold the assertions wrapt up, 

 as it were, and implied in those with which we set 

 out, and to bring a person to perceive and acknow- 

 ledge the full force of that which he has admitted," 

 he does not, I think, meet the real difficulty requiring 

 to be explained, namely, how it happens that a science, 

 like geometry, can be all " wrapt up " in a few defi- 

 nitions and axioms. Nor does this defence of the 

 syllogism differ much from what its assailants urge 

 against it as an accusation, when they charge it with 

 being of no use except to those who seek to press the 

 consequences of an admission into which a man has 

 been entrapped without having considered and under- 



Logic, p. 216. 



