1x6 



EEASONING. 



sense, that the function of names is | 

 but that of enabling us to remember 

 and communicate our thoughts. That 

 they also strengthen, even to an incal- 

 culable extent, the power of thought 

 itself, is most true : but they do this 

 by no intrinsic and peculiar virtue ; 

 they do it by the power inherent in 

 an artificial memory, an instrument 

 of which few have adequately con- 

 sidered the immense potency. As an 

 artificial memory, language truly is, 

 what it has so often been called, an 

 instrument of thought ; but it is one 

 thing to be the instrument, and 

 another to be the exclusive subject 

 upon which the instrument is exercised. 

 We think, indeed, to a considerable 

 extent by means of names, but what we 

 think of are the things called by those 

 names ; and there cannot be a greater 

 error than to imagine that thought 

 can be carried on with nothing in our 

 mind but names, or that we can make 

 the names think for us. 



§ 3. Those who considered the dic- 

 tum de omni as the foundation of the 

 syllogism, looked upon arguments in a 

 manner corresponding to the errone- 

 ous view which Hobbes took of pro- 

 positions. Because there are some 

 propositions which are merely verbal, 

 Hobbes, in order apparently that his 

 definition might be rigorously uni- 

 versal, defined a proposition as if no 

 propositions declared anything except 

 the meaning of words. If Hobbes 

 was right ; if no further account than 

 this could be given of the import of 

 propositions, no theory could be given 

 but the commonly received one of the 

 combination of propositions in a syl- 

 logism. If the minor premise asserted 

 nothing more than that something 

 belongs to a class, and if the major 

 premise asserted nothing of that class 

 except that it is included in another 

 class, the conclusion would only be 

 that what was included in the lower 

 class is included in the higher, and 

 the result, therefore, nothing except 

 that the classification is consistent 

 with itself. But we have seen that 



it is no sufficient account of the mean- 

 ing of a proposition to say that it 

 refers something to, or excludes some- 

 thing from, a class. Every proposition 

 which conveys real information asserts 

 a matter of fact, dependent on the laws 

 of nature, and not on classification. 

 It asserts that a given object does or 

 does not possess a given attribute ; 

 or it asserts that two attributes, or 

 sets of attributes, do or do not (con- 

 stantly or occasionally) co-exist. Since 

 such is the purport of all propositions 

 which convey any real knowledge, and 

 since ratiocination is a mode of acquir- 

 ing real knowledge, any theory of ratio- 

 cination which does not recognise this 

 import of propositions, cannot, we may 

 be sure, be the true one. 



Applying this view of propositions 

 to the two wemises of a syllogism, 

 we obtain th^^ollowing results. The 

 major premiseTwhich, as already re- 

 marked, is always universal, asserts 

 that all things which have a certain 

 attribute (or attributes) have or have 

 not along with it a certain other 

 attribute (or attributes). The minor 

 premise asserts that the thing or set 

 of things which are the subject of 

 that premise have the first-mentioned 

 attribute ; and the conclusion is, that 

 they have (or that they have not) 

 the second. Thus in our former 

 example, 



All men are mortal, 



Socrates is a man, 

 therefore 



Socrates is mortal, 

 the subject and predicate of the major 

 premise are connotative terms, denot- 

 ing objects and connoting attributes. 

 The assertion in the major premise is, 

 that along with one of the two sets of 

 attributes, we always find the other ; 

 that the attributes connoted by "man " 

 never exist unless conjoined with the 

 attribute called mortality. The asser- 

 tion in the minor premise is that the 

 individual named Socrates possesses 

 the former attributes ; and it is con- 

 cluded that he possesses also the 

 attribute mortality. Or if both the 

 premises are general propositions, as — 



