[Footnote 59: Sir W. Hamilton (Lectures on Logic, vol. i. p. 319)
says justly, that Aristotle has been very brief and unexplicit in his
treatment of Induction. Yet the objections that Hamilton makes to
Aristotle are very different from those which I should make. In the
learned and valuable Appendix to his Lectures (vol. iv. pp. 358-369),
he collects various interesting criticisms of logicians respecting
Induction as handled by Aristotle. Ramus (in his Scholæ Dialecticæ,
VIII. xi.) says very truly:--"Quid vero sit Inductio, perobscure ab
Aristotele declaratur; nec ab interpretibus intelligitur, quo modo
_syllogismus_ per medium concludat majus extremum de minore;
_inductio_, majus de medio per minus."
The Inductive Syllogism, as constructed by Aristotle, requires a
reciprocating minor premiss. It may, indeed, be cited (as I have
already remarked) in support of Hamilton's favourite precept of
quantifying the predicate. The predicate of this minor must be
assumed as _quantified in thought_, the subject being taken as
co-extensive therewith. Therefore Hamilton's demand that it shall be
_quantified in speech_ has really in this case that foundation which
he erroneously claims for it in all cases. He complains that Lambert
and some other logicians dispense with the necessity of quantifying
the predicate of the minor by making it disjunctive; and adds the
remarkable statement that "the recent German logicians, Herbart,
Twesten, Drobisch, &c., following Lambert, make the Inductive
Syllogism a byeword" (p. 366). I agree with them in thinking the
attempted transformation of Induction into Syllogism very
unfortunate, though my reasons are probably not the same as theirs.
Trendelenburg agrees with those who said that Aristotle's doctrine
about the Inductive Syllogism required that the minor should be
disjunctively enunciated (Logische Untersuchungen, xiv. p. 175, xvi.
pp. 262, 263; also Erläuterungen zu den Elementen der Aristotelischen
Logik, ss. 34-36, p. 71). Ueberweg takes a similar view (System der
**Logik, sect. 128, p. 367, 3rd ed.). If the Inductive Inference
is to be twisted into Syllogism, it seems more naturally to fall into
an _hypothetical_ syllogism, _e. g._:--
If this, that, and the other magnet attract iron, all magnets attract
iron;
But this, that, and the other magnet do attract iron: _Ergo_,
&c.]
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