FUNCTIONS AND VALUE OF THE SYLLOGISM. 261 



syllogisms. The real nature, however, of the sup- 

 posed deductive process, is evident enough. It is a 

 search for truth, no doubt, but through the medium 

 of an inquiry into the meaning of a form of words. 

 The only point to be determined is, whether the 

 authority which declared the general proposition, 

 intended to include this case in it ; and whether the 

 legislator intended his command to apply to the pre- 

 sent case among others, or not. This is a question, 

 as the Germans express it, of hermeneutics ; it relates 

 to the meaning of a certain form of discourse. The 

 operation is not a process of inference, but a process 

 of interpretation. 



In this last phrase we have obtained an expression 

 which appears to me to characterize, more aptly than 

 any other, the functions of the syllogism in all cases. 

 When the premisses are given by authority, the 

 function of Reasoning is to ascertain the testimony of 

 a witness, or the will of a legislator, by interpreting 

 the signs in which the one has intimated his assertion 

 and the other his command. In like manner, when 

 the premisses are derived from observation, the func- 

 tion of Reasoning is to ascertain what we (or our 

 predecessors) formerly thought might be inferred from 

 the observed facts, and to do this by interpreting a 

 memorandum of ours, or of theirs. The memorandum 

 reminds us, that from evidence, more or less carefully 

 weighed, it formerly appeared that a certain attribute 

 might be inferred wherever we perceive a certain 

 mark. The proposition, All men are mortal, (for 

 instance,) shows that we have had experience from 

 which we thought it followed that the attributes 

 connoted by the term man, are a mark of mortality. 

 But when we conclude that the Duke of Wellington 

 is mortal, we do not infer this from the memorandum, 



