FUNCTIONS AND VALUE OF THE SYLLOGISM. 127 



handling system into an equivalent weighing system, that the general 

 principle of his peculiar mode of proceeding might be ascertained. 

 This, liowever, the man found himself quite unable to do, and therefore 

 could impart his skill to nobody. He had, from the individual cases of 

 his o^vn experience, established a connexion in his mind between fine 

 effects of color, and tactual perceptions in handling his dyeing materi- 

 als ; and from these perceptions he could, in any particular cases, infer 

 the means to be employed, and the effects which would be produced, 

 but could not put others in possession of the gi'onnds on which he pro- 

 ceeded, from having never generalized them in his own. mind, or ex- 

 pressed them in language. 



Almost every one knows Lord Mansfield's advice to a man of prac- 

 tical good sense, who, being appointed governor of a colony, had to 

 preside in its court of justice, without previous judicial practice or legal 

 education. The ad\-ice was, to give his decision boldly, for it would 

 probably be right ; but never to venture on assigning reasons, for they 

 would almost infallibly be wi-ong. In cases like this, which are of no 

 uncommon occurrence, it would be, absurd to suppose that the bad 

 reason was the source of the good decision. Lord Mansfield knew that 

 if any reason were assigned it would be necessarily an afterthought, 

 the judge being in fact guided by impressions from past experience, 

 without the circuitous process of framing general principles fi-om them, 

 and that if he attempted to frame any such he would assuredly fail. 

 Lord Mansfield, however, would not have doubted that a man of equal 

 experience, who had also a mind stored with general propositions de- 

 rived by legitimate induction from tliat experience, would have been 

 greatly preferable as a judge, to one, howpver sagacious, who could 

 not be trusted with the explanation and justification of his own judg- 

 ments. The cases of able men performing wonderful things they know 

 not how, are examples of the less civilized and most spontaneous form 

 of the operations of superior minds. It is a defect in them, and often 

 a somxe of eiTors, not to have generalized as they went on ; but gen- 

 eralization is a help, the most impoitant indeed of all helps, yet not an 

 essential. 



Even philosophers, who possess, in the form of general propositions, 

 a systematic record of the results of the experience of mankind, need 

 not always revert to those general propositions in order to apply that 

 experience to a new case. It is justly remarked by Dugald Stewart, 

 that though our reasonings in mathematics depend entirely upon the 

 axioms, it is by no means necessary to our seeing the conclusiveness of 

 the proof, that the axioms should be expressly adverted to. Wlien it 

 is inferred that A B is equal to C D because each of them is equal to 

 E F, the most uncultivated understanding, as soon as the propositions 

 were imderstood, would assent to the inference, without having ever 

 heard of the general truth that " things which are equal to the same 

 thing ai-e equal to one another." This remark of Stewart, consistently 

 followed out, goes to the root, as I conceive, of the philosophy of 

 ratiocination ; and it is to be regretted that he himself stopped short at 

 a much more limited application of it. He saw that the general propo- 

 sitions on which a reasoning is said to depend, may, in certain cases, 

 be altogedier omitted, without impaii'ing its probative force. But he 

 imagined this to bo a peculiarity belonging to axioms ; and argued from 

 it, that axioms are not the foundations or first principles of geometry, 



