262 REASONING. 



but from the former experience. All that we infer 

 from the memorandum, is our own previous belief, 

 (or that of those who transmitted to us the propo- 

 sition,) concerning the inferences which that former 

 experience would warrant. 



This view of the nature of the syllogism renders 

 consistent and intelligible what otherwise remains 

 obscure and confused in the theory of Archbishop 

 Whately and other enlightened defenders of the syllo- 

 gistic doctrine, respecting the limits to which its 

 functions are confined. They all affirm, in as explicit 

 terms as can be used, that the sole office of general 

 reasoning is to prevent inconsistency in our opinions ; 

 to prevent us from assenting to anything, the truth of 

 which would contradict something to which we had 

 previously on good grounds given our assent. And 

 they tell us, that the sole ground which a syllogism 

 affords for assenting to the conclusion, is that the 

 supposition of its being false, combined with the 

 supposition that the premisses are true, would lead to 

 a contradiction in terms. Now this would be but a 

 lame account of the real grounds which we have for 

 believing the facts which we learn from reasoning, in 

 contradistinction to observation. The true reason 

 why we believe that the Duke of Wellington will die, 

 is that his fathers, and our fathers, and all other 

 persons who were contemporary with them, have died. 

 Those facts are the real premisses of the reasoning. 

 But we are not led to infer the conclusion from those 

 premisses, by the necessity of avoiding any verbal 

 inconsistency. There is no contradiction in supposing 

 that all those persons have died, and that the Duke 

 of Wellington may, notwithstanding, live for ever. 

 But there would be a contradiction if we first, on the 

 ground of those same premisses, made a general 



