FUNCTIONS AND VALUE OF THE SYLLOGISM. 269 



process of investigation into two parts ; and obtain 

 general formulse for determining what inferences may 

 be drawn, before the occasion arises for drawing the 

 inferences. The work of drawing them is then that 

 of applying the formulae ; and the rules of the syllo- 

 gism are a system of securities for the correctness of 

 the application. 



6 . To complete the series of considerations con- 

 nected with the philosophical character of the syllo- 

 gism, it is requisite to consider, since the syllogism is 

 not the universal type of the reasoning process, what 

 is the real type. This resolves itself into the ques- 

 tion, what is the nature of the minor premiss, and in 

 what manner it contributes to establish the conclu- 

 sion : for as to the major, we now fully understand, 

 that the place which it nominally occupies in our 

 reasonings, properly belongs to the individual facts or 

 observations of which it expresses the general result; 

 the major itself being no real part of the argument, 

 but an intermediate halting place for the mind, inter- 

 posed by an artifice of language between the real 

 premisses and the conclusion, by way of a security, 

 which it is in a most material degree, for the correct- 

 ness of the process. The minor, however, being an 

 indispensable part of the syllogistic expression of an 

 argument, without doubt either is, or corresponds to, 

 an equally indispensable part of the argument itself, 

 and we have only to inquire what part. 



It is perhaps worth while to notice here a specu- 

 lation of one of the philosophers to whom mental 

 science is most indebted, but who, though a very 

 penetrating, was a very hasty thinker, and whose 

 want of due circumspection rendered him fully as 

 remarkable for what he did not see, as for what he saw. 



