130 REASONING. 



lars alone are capable of being subjected to observation ; and all knowl- 

 edge which is derived from observation, begins, therefore, of necessity, 

 in particiilai-s ; but our knowledge may, in cases of a certain descrip- 

 tion, be conceived as coming to us from other sources than observa- 

 tion. It may pi'esent itself as coming from revelation ; and the knowl- 

 edore, thus supernaturally communicated, may be conceived to com- ' 

 prise not only particular facts "but general propositions, such as; occur 

 so abundantly in the A\Titings of Solomon and in the apostolic epistles. 

 Or the generalization may not be, in the ordinary sense, an assertion at 

 all, but a command ; a law, not- in the philosophical, but in the moral 

 and political sense of the term' : an .expression of the desire of a supe- 

 rior, that we, or any number of other persons, shall conform our con- 

 duct to certain general instriictions. So far as this asserts a fact, 

 namely, a volition of the legislator, that fact is an individual fact, and 

 the proposition, therefore, is not a general proposition. But the de- 

 scription therein contained of the conduct which it is the Avill of the 

 legislator that his subjects should observe, is general. The proposi- 

 tion asserts, not that all men ore anything, but that all men sJiall do 

 something. These two cases, of a truth revealed in general terms, and 

 a command intimated in the like manner, might be exchanged for the 

 more extensive cases, of any general statement received upon testimony, 

 and any general practical precept. But the more limited illustrations 

 suit us better, being drawn from subjects where long and complicated 

 trains of ratiocination have actually been grounded upon premisses 

 which came to mankind from the first in a general form, the subjects 

 of Scriptural Theology and of positive Law. 



In both these cases the generalities are given to us, and the pattic- 

 ulars are elicited from them by a process which correctly resolves itself 

 into a series of syllogisms. The real nature, however, of the supposed 

 deductive process, is evident enough. It is a search for ti-uth, no doubt, 

 but through the medium of an inquiry into the meaning- of a fonn of 

 words. The only point to be determined is, whether the authority 

 which declared the general proposition, intended, to include this case 

 in it ; and whether the legislator intended his command to apply to the 

 presetit case among others, or not. This is a question, as the Gennans 

 express it, of hermeneutics ; it relates to the meaning of a certain fonn 

 of discourse. The operation is not a process of inference, but a pro- 

 cess of interpretation. 



In this last phrase we have obtained an expression which appears to 

 me to characterize, more aptly than any other, the functions of the 

 syllogism in all cases. When the premisses are given by authority, 

 the function of Reasoning is to ascertain the testimony of a witness, 

 or the will of a legislator, by intei-preting the signs in which the one 

 has intimated hife assertion and the other his command. In like man- 

 ner, when the premisses are derived from observation, the function of 

 Reasoning is to ascertain w'hat we (or our predecessors) formerly 

 thought might be infen-ed from the observed facts, and to do this by 

 intei-preting a memorandum of ours, or of theirs. The memorandum 

 reminds us, that from evidence, more or less carefully weighed, it 

 formerly appeared that a certain attribute might be infeiTed wherever 

 we perceive a certain mark. The proposition. All men are mortal, 

 (for instance,) shows that we have had experience from which we 

 thought it followed that the attributes connoted by the tcnn man, aie 



