FUNCTIONS AND VALUE OF THE SYLLOGISM. 263 



assertion including and covering the case of the Duke 

 of Wellington, and then refused to stand to it in the 

 individual case. There is an inconsistency to be 

 avoided between the memorandum we make of the 

 inferences which may be justly drawn in future cases, 

 and the inferences we actually draw in those cases 

 when they arise. With this view we interpret our 

 own formula, precisely as a judge interprets a law : in 

 order that we may avoid drawing any inferences not 

 conformable to our former intention, as a judge avoids 

 giving any decision not conformable to the legislator's 

 intention. The rules for this interpretation are the 

 rules of the syllogism : and its sole purpose is to 

 maintain consistency between the conclusions we draw 

 in every particular case, and the previous general 

 directions for drawing them; whether those general 

 directions were framed by ourselves as the result of 

 induction, or were received by us from an authority 

 competent to give them. 



5. In the above observations it has, I think, 

 been clearly shown, that, although there is always a 

 process of reasoning or inference where a syllogism is 

 used, the syllogism is not a correct analysis of that 

 process of reasoning or inference ; which is, on the 

 contrary, (when not a mere inference from testimony,) 

 an inference from particulars to particulars; autho- 

 rised by a previous inference from particulars to 

 generals, and substantially the same with it; of the 

 nature, therefore, of Induction. But, while these 

 conclusions appear to me undeniable, I must yet enter 

 a protest, as strong as that of Archbishop Whately 

 himself, against the doctrine that the syllogistic art is 

 useless for the purposes of reasoning. The reasoning 

 lies in the act of generalisation, not in interpreting the 



