FUNCTIONS AND VALUE OF THE SYLLOGISM. 135 



It is perhaps worth while to notice here a speculation of one of the 

 philosophers to whom mental science is must indebted, hut who, 

 though a very penetrating, was a very hasty thinker, and whose want 

 of due circumspection rendered him fully as remarkable for what he 

 did not see, as for what he saw. I allude to Dr. Thomas Brown, 

 whose theory of ratiocination is peculiar. He saw the "pctltio principii 

 which is inherent in every syllogism, if we consider the major to be 

 itself the evidence by which the conclusion is proved, instead of being, 

 what in fact it is, an assertion of the existence of evidence sufficient 

 to prove any conclusion of a given description. Seeing this. Dr. 

 Brown not only failed to see the imnrense advantage, in point of 

 secmity for coiTectness, which is gained by interposing this step 

 between the real evidence and the conclusion ; but he thought it 

 incumbent upon him to strike out the major altogether from the reason- 

 ing process, without substituting anything else ; and maintained that 

 our reasonings consist only of the minor premiss and the conclusion, 

 Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal : thus actually suppress- 

 ing, as an unnecessary step in the argument, the appeal to foniier 

 experience. The absurdity of this was disguised from him by the 

 opinion he adopted, that reasoning is merely analyzing our own general 

 notions, or abstract ideas ; and that the proposition, Socrates is mortal, 

 is evolved from the proposition, Socrates is a man, simply by recog- 

 nizing the notion of mortality, as al^-eady contained in the notion we 

 form of a man. 



After the explanations so fully entered into on the subject of 

 propositions, much further discussion cannot be necessary to make the 

 radical error of this view of ratiocination apparent. If the word man 

 connoted mortality ; if the meaning of " mortal" were involved in the 

 meaning of " man ;" we might, undoubtedly, evolve the conclusion 

 fi-om the minor alone, because the minor would have distinctly asserted 

 it. But if, as is in fact the case, the word man does not connote mortality, 

 how does it appear that in the mind of every person who admits 

 Socrates to be a man, the idea of man must include the idea of mor- 

 tality 1 Dr. Brown could not help seeing this difficulty, and in order 

 to avoid it, was led, contrary to his intention, to reestablish, under 

 another name, that step in the argument which corresponds to the 

 major, by affinning the necessity oi 'previously perceiving the relation 

 between the idea of man and the idea of mortal. If the reasbner has 

 not previously perceived this relation, he will not, says Dr. Brown, 

 infer because Socrates is a man, that Socrates is mortal. But even 

 this admission, though amounting to a surrender of the doctrine that 

 an argument consists of the minor and the conclusion alone, will not 

 save the remainder of Dr. Brown's theory. The failure of assent to 

 the argument does not take place merely because the reasoner, for 

 want of due analysis, does not perceive that his idea of man includes 

 the idea of mortality ; it takes place, much more commonly, because 

 in his mind that relation between the two ideas has never existed. 

 And in truth it never does exist, except as the result of experience. 

 Consenting, for the sake of the argument, to discuss the question upon 

 a supposition of which we have recognized the radical incoiTectness, 

 namely, that the meaning of a proposition relates to the ideas of the 

 things spoken of, and not to the things themselves ; and conceding for 

 a moment, the existence of abstract ideas, I must yet observe, that the 



