_Position of Mill._--An able and ingenious writer, Mr. Mill, in his treatise on logic, takes the ground that we have no need to embody the result of our observations in the form of a general proposition, from which again to descend to the particular conclusion, but that, dispensing with the general proposition altogether, and with the syllogism of every kind and form, we may, and virtually do, reason directly from one particular instance to another, as, _e. g._, _x_, _y_, _z_, are mortal; therefore, _f_, _g_, _h_, are so. "If from our experience of John, Thomas, etc., who were once living, but are now dead, we are entitled to conclude that all human beings are mortal, we might surely, without any logical inconsequence, have concluded at once, from those instances, that the Duke of Wellington is mortal. The mortality of John, Thomas, and company, is, after all, the whole evidence we have of the mortality of the Duke of Wellington. Not one iota is added to the proof by interpolating a general proposition." Our earliest inferences, he contends, are precisely of this sort. The child burning his fingers, reasons thus: "That fire burnt me, therefore this will." He does not generalize, "All fire burns; this is fire; therefore, this will burn." The only use of a general proposition, Mill contends, is simply to furnish collateral security for the correctness of our inference. _Remarks upon this View._--This view sweeps away at once, and forever, all mediate reasoning, and shuts us up to the narrow limits of such inference alone as proceeds from a given instance directly to a conclusion therefrom. No doubt we do sometimes reason thus. But it is a reasoning, the conclusiveness of which is not, and cannot be made, apparent by any form of statement. If called in question, we can only say, I think so, or, I believe so. The mortality of John does not prove the mortality of Thomas. It may not even render it probable; it is only when I have observed such and so many cases as to leave no reasonable doubt that the property in question _is a law of the class as such_, and _not a mere accident of the individual_, that I am really warranted in the belief that any individual, not as yet observed, will come under the same law, because belonging to the same class. To reason in this way is to generalize; whatever process stops short of this, stops so far short of any and all conclusive evidence of the truth of what it affirms. VIII. HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC.