FUNCTIONS AND VALUE OF THE SYLLOGISM. 125 



the rest -y. wo may, indeed, pass through the generalization. All men 

 are mortal, as an intermediate stage ; but it is not in the latter half of 

 the process, the descent from all men to the Duke of Wellington, that 

 the ittfercncc resides. The inference is finished when we have asserted 

 that all men are mortal. What remains to be performed afterwards 

 is merely deciphering our own notes. 



Archbishop Whately has contended that syllogizing, or reasoning 

 from generals to particulars, is not, agreeably to the vulgar idea, a pe- 

 culiar mode of reasoning, but the philosophical analysis of the mode in 

 which all men reason, and must do so if they reason at alL With tbe 

 deference due to so high an authority, I cannot helji thinking that the 

 vulgar notion is, in this case, the more con-ect. If, from our experi- 

 ence of John, Thomas, &c., who once were li\'ing, but are now dead, 

 we are entitled to conclude that all human beings are mortal, we might 

 surely without any logical inconsequence have concluded at once fi-om 

 those instances, that the Duke of Wellington is mortal. The mortality 

 of John, Thomas, and company is, after all, the whole evidence we 

 have for the mortality of the Duke of Wellington. Not one iota is 

 added to the proof by intei-polating a general proposition. Since the 

 individual cases are all the evidence we can possess, evidence which 

 no logical form into which we choose to throw it can make gi'eater 

 than it is ; and since that evidence is either sufficient in itself, or, if in- 

 sufficient for one purpose, cannot be sufficient for the other; I am 

 unable to see why we should be forbidden to take the shortest cut 

 from these sufficient premisses to the conclusion, and constrained to 

 travel the "high priori road" by the arbitrary fiat of logicians. I can- 

 not perceive why it should be impossible to journey from one place to 

 another unless we " march up a hill, and then- march down again." It 

 may be the safest road, and there may be a resting place at the top 

 of the hill, affi)rding a commanding view of the suiTounding country ; 

 but for the inere purpose of arriving at our journey's end, our taking 

 that road is perfectly optional ; it is a question of time, trouble, and 

 danger. 



Not only may we reason from particulars to particulars, without 

 passing through generals, but" we perpetually do so reason. All our 

 earliest inferences are of this nature. From the first dawn of intelli- 

 gence we draw inferences, but years elapse before we learn the use 

 of general language. The child, who, having burnt his fingers, avoids 

 to thrust them again into the fire, has reasoned or inferred, though he 

 has never thought of the general maxim. Fire bums. He knows from 

 memory that he has been burnt, and on this evidence believes, when 

 he sOes a candle, that if he puts his finger into the flame of it, he will 

 be burnt again. He believes this in every case which happens to 

 arise ; but without looking, in each instance, beyond the present case. 

 He is not generalizing ; he is infemng a particular from particulars. 

 In the same way, also, brutes reason. There is little or no ground for 

 attributing to any of the lower animals the use of conventional signs, 

 without which general propositions are impossible. But those anima;ls 

 profit by experience, and avoid what they have found to cause them pain, 

 in the same manner, though not always with the same skill, as a human 

 creature. Not only the bui'nt child, but the burnt dog, dreads the fire. 



I believe that, in point of fact, when drawing inferences from our 

 personal experience and not from maxims handed down to us by 



