"From the considerations now adduced, the following
conclusions seem to be established:--All inference is
from particulars to particulars: General propositions
are merely registers of such inferences already made,
and short formulæ for making more: The major premiss of
a syllogism, consequently, is a formula of this
description; and the conclusion is not an inference
drawn _from_ the formula, but an inference drawn
_according to_ the formula: the real logical antecedent,
or premisses being _the particular facts from which the
general proposition was collected by induction_. * * *
"In the above observations, it has, I think, been
clearly shown, that although there is always a process
of reasoning or inference where a syllogism is used, the
syllogism is not a correct analysis of that process of
reasoning or inference; which is, on the contrary, (when
not a mere inference from testimony,) an inference from
particulars to particulars; authorized by a previous
inference from particulars to generals, and
substantially the same with it: of the nature,
therefore, of Induction. But while these conclusions
appear to me undeniable, I must yet enter a protest, as
strong as that of Archbishop Whately himself, against
the doctrine that the syllogistic art is useless for the
purposes of reasoning. The reasoning lies in the act of
generalisation, not in interpreting the record of that
act; but the syllogistic form is all indispensable
collateral security for the correctness of the
generalisation itself."--P. 259.
By this explanation we are released from the dilemma into which the
syllogistic and non-syllogistic party had together thrown us. We can
acknowledge that the process of reason can be always exhibited in the
form of a syllogism, and yet not be driven to the strange and
perplexing conclusion that our reasoning can never conduct us to a new
truth, never lead us further than to admit in one shape what we had
already admitted in another. We have, or may have, it is true, a
_major_ in all our ratiocination, implied, if not expressed, and are
so far syllogistic; but then the real premiss from which we reason is
the amount of experience on which that major was founded, to which
amount of experience we, in fact, made an addition in our _minor_, or
conclusion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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