108 REASONING. 



This expression recognizes the commonly received distinction between 

 Subject and Attribute, and gives the follow^ing as the analysis of the 

 meaning of propositions : — Every Proposition asserts, that some given 

 subject does or does not possess some attribute ; or that some attribute 

 is or is not (either in all or in some portion of the subjects in which it 

 is met with) conjoined with some other attribute. 



We shall now for the present take our leave of this portion of our 

 inquir}', and proceed to the peculiar problem of the Science of Logic, 

 namely, how the assertions, of which we have analyzed the import, 

 are proved, or disproved : such of them, at least, as, not being amena- 

 ble to direct consciousness or intuition, are appropriate subjects of 

 proof 



We say of a fact or statement, that it is proved, when we be- 

 lieve its ti-uth by reason of some other fact or statement fi-om which 

 it is said to folloic. Most of the propositions, whether affirmative or 

 negative, universal, particular, or singular, which we believe, are not 

 believed on their own evidence, but on the ground of something pre- 

 viously assented to, and from which they are said to be inferred. To 

 infer a proposition from a previous proposition or propositions ; to 

 give credence to it, or claim credence for it, as a conclusion from 

 something else ; is to reason, in the most extensive sense of the term. 

 There is a nan'ower sense, in which the name reasoning is confined to 

 the form of inference which is termed ratiocination, and of which the 

 syllogism is the general type. The reasons for not conforming to this 

 restricted use of the teim were stated in an early stage of our inquiry, 

 and additional motives will be suggested by the considerations on 

 which we are now about to enter. 



§ 2. In proceeding to take into consideration the cases in which 

 inferences can legitimately be drawn, we shall first mention some cases 

 in which the inference is apparent, not real ; and which require notice 

 chiefly that they may not be confounded with cases of inference prop- 

 erly so called. This occurs when the proposition ostensibly inferred 

 from another, appears on analysis to be merely a repetition of the same, 

 or part of the same, assertion, which ■A'as contained in the first. All 

 the cases mentioned in books of Logic, as examples of yEquipollency 

 or equivalence of propositions, are of this nature. Thus, if we were 

 to argue, No man is incapable of reason, for every man is rational ; 

 or. All men ai'c mortal, for no man is exempt from death ; it would 

 be plain that we were not proving the proposition, but only appealing 

 to another mode of wording it, which may or may not be more readily 

 comprehensible by the hearer, or better adapted to suggest the real 

 proof, but which contains in itself no shadow of proof 



Another case is where, from an universal proposition, we affect to 

 infer another which differs from it only in being particular : as. All A 

 is B, therefore Some A is B : No A is B, therefore Some A is not B. 

 This, too, is not to conclude one proposition fi-om another, but to 

 repeat a second time something which had been asserted at fii'st ; with 

 the difference, that we do not here repeat the whole of the previous 

 assertion, but only an indefinite part of it. 



A third case is where, the antecedent having affirmed a predicate 

 of a given subject, the consequent affirms of the same subject some- 

 thing already connoted by the fonner -predicate : eus, Socrates is a 



