RATIOCINATION, OR SYLLOGISM. 



117 



All men are mortal, 

 All kings are men, 



therefore 

 All kings are mortal, 

 the minor premise asserts that the 

 attributes denoted by kingship only 

 exist in conjunction with those signi- 

 fied by the word " man." The major 

 asserts as before, that the last-men- 

 tioned attributes are never found 

 without the attribute of mortality. 

 The conclusion is, that wherever the 

 attributes of kingship are found, that 

 of mortality is found also. 



If the major premise were negative, 

 as. No men are omnipotent, it would 

 assert, not that the attributes con- 

 noted by " man " never exist without, 

 but that they never exist with, those 

 connoted by "omnipotent : " from 

 which, together with the minor pre- 

 mise, it is concluded that the same 

 incompatibility exists between the 

 attribute omnipotence and those con- 

 stituting a king. In a similar man- 

 ner we might analyse any other ex- 

 ample of the syllogism. 



If we generalise this process, and 

 look out for the principle or law in- 

 volved in every such inference, and 

 presupposed in every syllogism, the 

 propositions of which are anything 

 more than merely verbal ; we find, 

 not the unmeaning dictum de omni et 

 nidlo, but a fundamental principle, or 

 rather two principles, strikingly re- 

 sembling the axioms of mathematics. 

 The first, which is the principle of 

 affirmative syllogism, is, that things 

 which co-exist with the same thing, 

 co-exist with one another : or (still 

 more precisely) a thing which co- 

 exists with another thing, which other 

 co-exists with a third thing, also co- 

 exists with that third thing. The 

 second is the principle of negative 

 syllogisms, and is to this effect : that 

 a thing which co-exists with another 

 thing, with which other a third thing 

 does not co-exist, is not co-existent 

 with that third thing. These axioms 

 manifestly relate to facts, and not 

 to conventions ; and one or other of 

 them is the ground of the legitimacy 



of every argument in which facts and 

 not conventions are the matter treated 

 of.* 



§ 4. It remains to translate this 

 exposition of the syllogism from the 



* Mr. Herbert Spencer (Principles of Psy- 

 chology, pp. 125-7) though his tlieory of the 

 s> llogism coincides with all that i> essen- 

 tial of mine, thinks it a logical fallacy to 

 present the two axioms in the text as the 

 regulating principles of syllogism. He 

 charges me with falling into the error, 

 pointed oiit by Archbishop Whately and 

 myself, of confounding exact likeness with 

 literal identity; and maintains tliat we 

 ought not to say that Socrates possesses 

 the savie attributes which are connoted by 

 the word Man, but only that he possesses 

 attributes exactly like them : according to 

 which phraseology, Socrates and the attri- 

 bute mortality are not two things co-exist- 

 ing with the same thing, as the axiom 

 asserts, but two things co-existing with 

 two different things. 



The question between Mr. Spencer and 

 me is merely one ot language ; for neither 

 of U8(if I understand Mr. Spencer's opinions 

 rightly) believes an attrihuie to be a real 

 thing, possessed of objective existence ; we 

 believe it to be a particular mode of nam- 

 ing our sensations, or our expectations of 

 sensation, when looked at in their relation 

 to an external object which excites them. 

 The question raised by Mr. Spencer does 

 not, therefore, concern the properties of 

 any really existing thing, but the compara- 

 tive appropriateness, for philosophical pur- 

 poses, of two different njodes of using a 

 name. Considered in this point of view, 

 the phraseology I have employed, which is 

 that commonly used by philosophers, seems 

 to me to be the best. Mr. Spencer is of 

 opinion that because Socrates and Alcibi- 

 ades are not the same man, the attribute 

 which constitutes them men should not be 

 called the same attribute ; that because the 

 humanity of one man and that of another 

 express themselves to our senses not by 

 the same individual sensations, but by sen- 

 sations exactly alike, humanity ought to 

 be regarded as a different attribute in every 

 different man. But on this showing, the 

 humanity even of any one man should be 

 considered as different attributes now and 

 half-an-hour hence ; for the sensations by 

 whicii it will then manifest it-elf to my 

 organs will not be a continuation of my 

 present sensations but a repetition of them ; 

 fresh sensations, not identical with, but 

 only exactly like the present. If every 

 gt-neral conception, instead ot being "the 

 One in the Many," were considered to be 

 as many different conceptions as there are 

 things to which it is applicable, there 

 would be no such tiling as general lan- 

 guage. A name would have no general 



