270 REASONING. 



I allude to Dr. Thomas Brown, whose theory of ratioci- 

 nation is peculiar. He saw the petitio principii which 

 is inherent in every syllogism, if we consider the 

 major to be itself the evidence by which the conclusion 

 is proved, instead of being, what in fact it is, an 

 assertion of .the existence of evidence sufficient to 

 prove any conclusion of a given description. Seeing 

 this, Dr. Brown not only failed to see the immense 

 advantage, in point of security for correctness, which 

 is gained by interposing this step between the real 

 evidence and the conclusion ; but he thought it 

 incumbent upon him to strike out the major alto- 

 gether from the reasoning process, without substituting 

 anything else ; and maintained that our reasonings 

 consist only of the minor premiss and the conclusion, 

 Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal: thus 

 actually suppressing, as an unnecessary step in the 

 argument, the appeal to former experience. The 

 absurdity of this was disguised from him by the 

 opinion he adopted, that reasoning is merely analyzing 

 our own general notions, or abstract ideas ; and that 

 the proposition, Socrates is mortal, is evolved from 

 the proposition, Socrates is a man, simply by recog- 

 nising the notion of mortality as already contained in 

 the notion we form of a man. 



After the explanations so fully entered into on the 

 subject of propositions, much further discussion cannot 

 be necessary to make the radical error of this view of 

 ratiocination apparent. If the word man connoted 

 mortality ; if the meaning of " mortal" were involved 

 in the meaning of man;" we might, undoubtedly, 

 evolve the conclusion from the minor alone, because 

 the minor would have distinctly asserted it. But if, 

 as is in fact the case, the word man does not connote 

 mortality, how does it appear that in the mind of 



