FUNCTIONS AND VALUE OF THE SYLLOGISM. 123 



mortality of every individual man : tliat if it be still doubtful whether 

 Socrates, or any other indi-v-idunl you choose to name, be morta:l or 

 not, the same degree of uncertainty must hang over the assertion, All 

 men are mortal : that the general principle, instead of being given as 

 evidence of the particular case, cannot itself be taken for true without 

 exception, until every shadow of doubt which could affect any caso 

 comprised with it, is dispelled by evidence aliunde.; and then what 

 remains for the syllogism to prove ] that, in short, no reasoning fi-om 

 generals to particulars can, as such, prove anything : since from a 

 general principle you cannot infer any particulars, but those which the 

 principle itself assumes as foreknown. 



This doctrine is irrefragable ; and if logicians, though unable to 

 dispute it, have usually exhibited a strong disposition to explain it 

 away, this was not because they could discover any flaw in the argu- 

 ment itself, but because the contrary opinion seemed to rest upon 

 arguments equally indisputable. In the syllogism last referred to, for 

 example, or in any of those which we previously constructed, is it not 

 evident that the conclusion may, to the person to whom the syllogism 

 is presented, be actually and boiid fide a new truth 1 Is it not matter 

 of daily exjjerience that truths previously undreamt of, facts which 

 have not been, and cannot be, directly observed, are amved at by way 

 of general reasoning ? We believe that the Duke of Wellington is 

 mortal. We do not know this by direct observation, since he is not 

 yet dead. If we were asked how, this being the case, we know the 

 duke to be mortal, we should probably ajiswer. Because all men are 

 so. Here, therefore, we ari'ive at the knowledge of a truth not (as 

 yet) susceptible of obsei-vation, by a reasoning which admits of being 

 exhibited in the following syllogism : — 



All men are mortal, 



The Duke of Wellington is a man, 



therefore 

 The Duke of Wellington is mortal. 



And since a large portion of our knowledge is thus acquired, logicians 

 have persisted in representing the syllogism as a process of inference 

 or proof; although none of them have cleared up the difficulty which 

 arises fi-om the inconsistency between that assertion and the principle, 

 that if there be anything in the conclusion which was not already as- 

 serted in the premisses, the argument is ricious. For it is impossible 

 to attach any serious scientific value to such a mere salvo, as the dis- 

 tinction drawn between being involved by impUcation in the premisses, 

 and being directly asserted in them. When Archbishop Whately, for 

 example, says,* that the object of reasoning is "merely to expand and 

 unfold the assertions wrapt up, as it were, and impHed in those with 

 which we set out, and to bring a person to perceive and acknowledge 

 the full force of tliat which he lias admitted," he docs not, I think, 

 meet the real difficulty requiring to be explained, namely, how it hap- 

 pens that a science, like geometry, can be all " wTSpt up" in a few 

 definitions and axioms. Nor does this defence of the syllogism differ 

 much from what its assailants urge against it as an accusation, whert 

 they charge it with being of no use except to those who seek to press 



* Logic, p. 216. 



