134 KEASONING. 



memory or to writing, and fi'om wliicli afterwards we have only to syl- 

 loo-ize. The particulars of om- experiments may then be dismissed 

 from the memory, in which it woulcl be impossible to retain so great 

 a multitude of details ; while the knowledge which those details afforded 

 for future use, and which would otherwise be lost as soon as the obser- 

 vations were forgotten, or as their record became too bulky for refer- 

 ence, is retained in a commodious and immediately available shape by 

 means of general language. 



A.fainst this advantage is to be set the countei-vailing inconvenience, 

 that inferences originally made on insufficient evidence, become conse- 

 crated, and, as it were, hardened into general maxims ; and the mind 

 cleaves to them from habit, after it has outgi'own any liability to be 

 misled by similar fallacious appearances if they were now for the first 

 time presented; but having forgotten the particulars, it does not think 

 of revising its own former decision. An inevitable drawback, which, 

 however considerable in itself, forms evidently but a trifling deduction 

 from the immense advantages of general language. 



The use of the syllogism is in truth no other than the use of general 

 propositions in reasoning. AVe can reason without them ; in simple 

 and obvious cases we habitually do so ; minds of great sagacity can 

 do it in cases not simple aiid obvious, provided their exj^erience 

 supplies them with instances essentially similar to every combination 

 of circumstances likely to arise. But other men, or the same men 

 when without the same preeminent advantages of personal experience, 

 are quite helpless without the aid of general propositions, wherever 

 the case presents the smallest complication ; and if we made no general 

 propositions, few of us would get hiuch beyond those simple infer- 

 ences which are drawn by the more intelligent of the brutes. Though 

 not necessary to reasoning, general propositions are necessary to any 

 considerable progress in reasoning. It is, therefore, natural and 

 indispensable to separate the process of investigation into two parts ; 

 and obtain general formulae for determining what inferences may be 

 drawn, before the occasion arises for drawing the inferences. The 

 work of drawing them is then that of applying the fbniiulce ; and the 

 rules of the syllogism are a system of securities for the con-ectness of 

 the application. 



§ 6. To complete the series of considerations connected with the 

 pnilosophical character of the syllogism, it is requisite to consider, 

 since the syllogism is not the universal type of the reasoning process, 

 what is the real type. This resolves itself into the question, what is 

 the nature of the minor premiss, and in what manner it contributes to 

 establish the conclusion ; for as to the major, we now fully understand, 

 that the place which it nominally occupies in our reasonings, properly 

 belongs to the individual facts or observations of which it expresses 

 the general result ; the major itself being no real part of the argument, 

 but an inteiTuediate halting place for the mind, interposed by an artifice 

 of language between the real premisses and the conclusion, by way 

 of a security, which it is in a most material degree, for the correctness 

 of the process. The minor, however, being an indispensable part of 

 the syllogistic expression of an argument, without doubt either is, or 

 corresponds to, an equally indispensable part of the argument itself, 

 and we have only to inquire what pait. 



