RATIOCINATION, OR SYLLOGISM. 119 



Things, ever was or could be originally got at by any conceivable 

 manipulation of mere names : and that wlit^t can be learnt from names, 

 is only what somebody who used the names, knew before ? Philoso- 

 phical analysis confirms the indication of common sense, that the func- 

 tion of names is but that of enabling us to remcmher and to communi- 

 cate our tlioughts. That they also strengthen, even to an incalculable 

 extent, the power of thought itself, is most true : but they do this by 

 no intrinsic and peculiar virtue : they do it by the power inherent in 

 an artificial memory, an instrument of which few have adequately con- 

 sidered the immense potency. As an- artificial memory, language truly 

 is, what it has so often been called, an instrument of thought : but it is 

 one thing to be the instrument, and another to be the exclusive subject 

 upon which the instrument is ejxercised. We think, indeed, to a con- 

 siderable extent, by means of names, but what Ave think of, are the 

 things called by those names ; and there cannot be a greater eiTor than 

 to imagine that thought can be canied on with nothing in our mind 

 but names, or that we can make the names think for us. 



§ 3. Those who considered the dictum de omni as the foundation of 

 the syllogism, looked upon arguments in a manner coiTesponding to 

 the erroneous Anew which Hobbes took of propositions. Because there 

 are some propositions which are merely verbal, Hobbes, in order (ap- 

 parently) that his definition might be rigorously universal, defined a 

 proposition as if no propositions declare'd anything except the meaning 

 of words. If Hobbes was right; if no further account than this could 

 be given of the import of propositions ; no theory could be given but 

 the commonly received one, of the combination of propositions in a 

 syllogism. If the minor premiss asserted nothing more than that some- 

 thing belongs to a class, and if, as consistency would require us to 

 suppose, the, major premiss asserted nothing of that class except that 

 it is included in another class, the conclusion would only be, that what 

 was included in the lower class is included in the higher, and the result, 

 therefore, nothing except that the classification is consistent Avith itself. 

 But Ave have seen that it is no sufficient account of the meaning of a 

 proposhion, to say that it refers something to, or excludes something 

 from, a class. EAory proposition Avhich conveys real infoi-mation 

 asserts a matter of fact, dependent upon the laAvs of nature and not 

 upon artificial classification. It asstits that a given object does or 

 does not possess a given attribute ; or it asserts that tAvo attributes, or 

 sets of attributes, do or do not (constantly or occasionally) coex- 

 ist. Since such is the purport of all propositions AA'hich convey 

 any real knowledge, and since ratiocination is a mode of acquir- 

 ing real knowledge, any theory of ratiocination Avhich does not re- 

 cognize this import of propositions,.cannot, we may be sure, be the 

 true one. 



Applying this vieAV of propositions to the two premisses of a syllo- 

 gism, Ave obtain the foUoAving results. The major premiss, which, as 

 already remarked, is ahvays universal, asserts, that all things Avhich have 

 a certain attribute (or attributes) have or have not along- Avith it, a cer- 

 tain other attribute (or attributes). The minor premiss asserts that the 

 thing or set of things Avhich are the subject of that premiss, have the 

 first-mentioned attribute ; and the conclusion is, that they have (or that 

 they have not) the second. Thus in our former example, 



