132 



REASONING. 



dence sufficient to prove any conclusion 

 of a given description. Seeing this, 

 Dr. Brown not only failed to see the 

 immense advantage, in point of secu- 

 rity for correctness, which is gained 

 by interposing this step between the 

 real evidence and the conclusion, but 

 he thought it incumbent on him to 

 strike out the major altogether from 

 the reasoning process, without substi- 

 tuting anything else, and maintained 

 that our reasonings consist only of the 

 minor premise and the conclusion, 

 Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates 

 is mortal : thus actually suppressing, 

 as an unnecessary step in the argu- 

 ment, the appeal to former experience. 

 The absurdity of this was disguised 

 from him by the opinion he adopted, 

 that reasoning is merely analysing 

 our own general notions or abstract 

 ideas ; and that the proposition, Soc- 

 rates is mortal, is evolved from the 

 proposition, Socrates is a man, simply 

 by recognising the notion of mortality 

 as already contained in the notion we 

 form of a man. 



After the explanations so fully en- 

 tered into on the subject of proposi- 

 tions, 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 in- 

 volved in the meaning of "man," we 

 might, undoubtedly, evolve the con- 

 clusion from the minor alone, because 

 the minor would have already asserted 

 it. Hut 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 mortality? Dr. 

 Brown could not help seeing this 

 difficulty, and, in order to avoid it, 

 was led, contrary to his intention, to 

 re-establish, under another name, that 

 step in the argument which corre- 

 sponds to the major, by affirming the 

 necessity of previously perceiving the 

 relation between the idea of man and 

 the idea of mortal. If the reasoner 

 ))^ not previously perceived this rela- 



tion, he will not, says Dr. Brown, in- 

 fer, 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 be- 

 tween the two ideas has never existed. 

 And in truth it never does exist, ex- 

 cept as the result of experience. Con- 

 senting, for the sake of the argument, 

 to discuss the question on a supposi- 

 tion of which we have recognised the 

 radical incorrectness, namely, that 

 the meaning of a proposition relates 

 to the ideas of the things spoken of, 

 and not to the things themselves ; I 

 must yet observe, that the idea of 

 man, as an universal idea, the com- 

 mon property of all rational creatures, 

 cannot involve anything but what is 

 strictly implied in the name. If any 

 one includes in his own private idea 

 of man, as no doubt is always the 

 case, some other attributes, such, for 

 instance, as mortality, he does so only 

 as the consequence of experience, after 

 having satisfied himself that all men 

 possess that attribute : so that what- 

 ever the idea contains, in any person's 

 mind, beyond what is included in 

 the conventional signification of the 

 word, has been added to it as the 

 result of assent to a proposition ; while 

 Dr. Brown's theory requires us to sup- 

 pose, on the contrary, that assent to 

 the proposition is produced by evolv- 

 ing, through an analjrtic process, this 

 very element out of the idea. This 

 theory, therefore, may be considered 

 as sufficiently refuted ; and the minor 

 premise must be regarded as totally 

 insufficient to prove the conclusion, 

 except with the assistance of the 

 major, or of that which the major re- 

 presents, namely, the various singular 



