40 PART I. THE PROBLEM. 



I have taken and eaten mushrooms on similar occasions. The 

 syllogism, in this particular instance, is altogether wanting. The 

 actual and the ideal. reasoning processes differ, therefore, fun- 

 damentally as a rule. 



The specific value of the syllogism lies in its being a touchstone 

 for dogmatic statements. Where, however, statements are un- 

 dogmatic, its value is reduced almost to zero. If we said "It 

 is probable that all men are mortal ; Socrates is perhaps to be 

 classed as a man", we should be scarcely warranted to state 

 dogmatically more than that "there is an indeterminable pro- 

 bability that Socrates is mortal". It is true that we possess 

 relatively excellent reasons for believing that every human 

 being, born in any land on the earth, and at any period up to 

 some 120 years ago, has died, and that the men of the present 

 day and those of the comparatively near future are also eminently 

 likely to die; but dogmatically we are not entitled to state in 

 our age that mortality is a permanent attribute of every human 

 being as such. 1 We are dealing here with a purely empirical 

 generalisation. Accordingly, it is not certain, as the school 

 syllogism appears to prove, . that Socrates is mortal, save by 

 arbitrarily assuming that all men are mortal. Even the leading 

 facts of gravitation and evolution have nothing absolute about 

 them when regarded in the light of the eternities, and the laws 

 of mathematics and of thought have had their alleged im- 

 mutable character challenged; and, besides, who knows what 

 the science of to-morrow will be able to accomplish in the 

 matter of extending man's term of life ?' 2 From this it follows 

 that indifferent use can be made as yet of the syllogism as 

 an instrument of science, and this view is strengthened when 



1 The most securely established generalisations in science frequently have 

 exceptions: "The presence of chlorophyll, which had always been associated 

 only with plant organisms, was detected by Max Schultze in 1851 in the ani- 

 mals Hydra and Vortex, and later on by Ray Lankester in Spongilla and by 

 Patrick Geddes in some Turbellarian worms." (Encycl. Britannica, llth edi- 

 tion, article "Parasitism", by P. C. Mitchell, p. 794.) And yet we must 

 remember that "in many cases where animals of some size have a green 

 colour and are apparently able to subsist on simple chemical substances, 

 this appearance has been shown to be due to the fact that their bodies are 

 the homes of multitudes of minute plants, which grow in them and give 

 them their colour by shining through the more or less transparent substance 

 of the body, but which sooner or later are digested by the animals in which 

 they live and serve as their food". (E. W. McBride, Zoology, 1911(?), p. 8.) 



Again. "During the last ten years living larvae have been produced by 

 chemical agencies from the unfertilised eggs of sea-urchins, star-fish, holo- 

 thurians, and a number of annelids and molluscs." (Article by Jacques 

 Loeb on an "Experimental Study of the Influence of Environment on Animals", 

 in Darwin and Modern Science, ed. by A. C. Seward, 1909, p. 251.) 



It should be remembered also that whilst some of the Ephemeridae live 

 only a few hours, certain species of trees have a life-span of several thousand 

 years. Nor should we forget that, barring accident, the protozoa are con- 

 sidered immortal, and that this is almost certainly true of the reproductive 

 germs. 



2 E. Metchnikoff, The Prolongation of Life, 1910. 



