"It will be found," he continues, "that all valid arguments whatever
may be easily reduced to such a form as that of the foregoing
syllogisms; and that consequently the principle on which they are
constructed is the UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLE of reasoning. So elliptical,
indeed, is the ordinary mode of expression, even of those who are
considered as prolix writers,--_i.e._ so much is implied and left to
be understood in the course of argument, in comparison of what is
actually stated, (most men being impatient, even to excess, of any
appearance of unnecessary and tedious formality of statement,) that a
single sentence will often be found, though perhaps considered as a
single argument, to contain, compressed into a short compass, a chain
of several distinct arguments. But if each of these be fully
developed, and the whole of what the author intended to imply be
stated expressly, it will be found that all the steps, even of the
longest and most complex train of reasoning, may be reduced into the
above form."--P. 32.
That it is not the office of the syllogism to discover _new_ truths,
our logician fully admits, and takes some pains to establish. This is
the office of "other operations of mind," not unaccompanied, however,
with acts of reasoning. Reasoning, argument, inference, (words which
he uses as synonymous,) have not for their object our advancement in
knowledge, or the acquisition of new truths.
"Much has been said," says Archbishop Whately, in another portion of
his work, "by some writers, of the superiority of the inductive to the
syllogistic methods of seeking truth, as if the two stood opposed to
each other; and of the advantage of substituting the _Organon_ of
Bacon for that of Aristotle, &c. &c., which indicates a total
misconception of the nature of both. There is, however, the more
excuse for the confusion of thought which prevails on this subject,
because eminent logical writers have treated, or at least have
appeared to treat, of induction as a kind of argument distinct from
the syllogism; which, if it were, it certainly might be contrasted
with the syllogism: or rather the whole syllogistic theory would fall
to the ground, since one of the very first principles it establishes,
is that _all_ reasoning, on whatever subject, is one and the same
process, which may be clearly exhibited in the form of syllogisms.
"This inaccuracy seems chiefly to have arisen from a vagueness in the
use of the word induction; which is sometimes employed to designate
the process of _investigation_ and of collecting facts, sometimes the
deducing an inference _from_ those facts. The former of these
processes (_viz._ that of observation and experiment) is undoubtedly
_distinct_ from that which takes place in the syllogism; but then it
is not a process of _argumentation_: the latter again _is_ an
argumentative process; but then it is, like all other arguments,
capable of being syllogistically expressed."--P. 263.
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