FUNCTIONS AND VALUE OF THE SYLLOGISM. 267 



in proportion to the greater chance of our detecting 

 the in collusiveness of our evidence, will be the 

 increased reliance we are entitled to place in it if no 

 such evidence of defect shall appear. 



The value, therefore, of the syllogistic form, and 

 of the rules for using it correctly, does not consist in 

 their being the form and the rules according to which 

 our reasonings are necessarily, or even usually, made ; 

 but in their furnishing us with a mode in which those 

 reasonings may always be represented, and which is 

 admirably calculated, if they are inconclusive, to 

 bring their inconclusiveness to light. An induction 

 from particulars to generals, followed by a syllogistic 

 process from those generals to other particulars, is a 

 form in which we may always state our reasonings if 

 we please. It is not a form in which we must reason, 

 but it is a form in which we may reason, and into 

 which it is indispensable to throw our reasoning, when 

 there is any doubt of its validity: though when the 

 case is familiar and little complicated, and there is no 

 suspicion of error, we may, and do, reason at once 

 from the known particular cases to unknown ones. 



These are the uses of the syllogism, as a mode of 

 verifying any given argument. Its ulterior uses, as 

 respects the general course of our intellectual opera- 

 tions, hardly require illustration, being in fact the 

 acknowledged uses of general language. They amount 

 substantially to this, that the inductions may be made 

 once for all : a single careful interrogation of expe- 

 rience may suffice, and the result may be registered in 

 the form of a general proposition, which is committed 

 to memory or to writing, and from which afterwards 

 we have only to syllogize. The particulars of our 

 experiments may then be dismissed from the memory, 

 in which it would be impossible to retain so great 



