FUNCTIONS AND VALUE OF THE SYLLOGISM. 249 



from the proposition, All men are mortal; whence do 

 we derive our knowledge of that general truth? No 

 supernatural aid being supposed, the answer must be, 

 by observation. Now, all which man can observe are 

 individual cases. From these all general truths must 

 be drawn, and into these they may be again resolved : 

 for a general truth is but an aggregate of particular 

 truths ; a comprehensive expression, by which an 

 indefinite number of individual facts are affirmed or 

 denied at once. But a general proposition is not 

 merely a compendious form for recording and pre- 

 serving in the memory a number of particular facts, 

 all of which have been observed. Generalisation is 

 not a process of mere naming, it is also a process of 

 inference. From instances which we have observed, 

 we feel warranted in concluding, that what we found 

 true in those instances, holds in all similar ones, past, 

 present, and future, however numerous they may be. 

 We then, by that valuable contrivance of language 

 which enables us to speak of many as if they were 

 one, record all that we have observed, together with 

 all that we infer from our observations, in one concise 

 expression; and have thus only one proposition, 

 instead of an endless number, to remember or to 

 communicate. The results of many observations and 

 inferences, and instructions for making innumerable 

 inferences in unforeseen cases, are compressed into 

 one short sentence. 



When, therefore, we conclude from the death of 

 John and Thomas, and every other person we ever 

 heard of in whose case the experiment had been 

 fairly tried, that the Duke of Wellington is mortal 

 like the rest; we may, indeed, pass through the 

 generalisation, All men are mortal, as an inter- 

 mediate stage ; but it is not in the latter half of the 



