268 REASONING. 



a multitude of details ; while the knowledge which 

 those details afforded for future use, and which would 

 otherwise be lost as soon as the observations were 

 forgotten, or as their record became too bulky for 

 reference, is retained in a commodious and imme- 

 diately available shape by means of general language. 



Against this advantage is to be set the counter- 

 vailing inconvenience, that inferences originally made 

 on insufficient evidence, become consecrated, and, as it 

 were, hardened into general maxims ; and the mind 

 cleaves to them from habit, after it has outgrown 

 any liability to be misled by similar fallacious appear- 

 ances if they were now for the first time presented ; 

 but having forgotten the particulars, it does not think 

 of revising its own former decision. An inevitable 

 drawback, which, however considerable in itself, forms 

 evidently but a trifling deduction from the immense 

 advantages of general language. 



The use of the syllogism is in truth no other than 

 the use of general propositions in reasoning. We 

 can reason without them ; in simple and obvious cases 

 we habitually do so ; minds of great sagacity can do it 

 in cases not simple and obvious, provided their expe- 

 rience supplies them with instances essentially similar 

 to every combination of circumstances likely to arise. 

 But other men, or the same men when without the 

 same preeminent advantages of personal experience, 

 are quite helpless without the aid of general proposi- 

 tions, wherever the case presents the smallest compli- 

 cation ; and if we made no general propositions, few 

 of us would get much beyond those simple inferences 

 which are drawn by the more intelligent of the brutes. 

 Though not necessary to reasoning, general propositions 

 are necessary to any considerable progress in reasoning. 

 It is, therefore, natural and indispensable to separate the 



