The major premise belongs only to this figure. In the other it is mere tradition to call it so, and their two premisses are the same in kind, and contribute equally to the conclusion, and for that reason the affirmative conclusion was not general or not formal. If your general conclusion is to follow by mere form, you must show your principle as explicitly covering your conclusion. But if you do this, then of course you are charged with begging the question. And, in a sense, that is what you mean to do, when you set out to make your argument complete by its mere form. If you have _bonâ fide_ to construct a combination of your data, you cannot predict whether the conclusion will take this form or that form. Using a major premise meant, “We have got a principle that covers the conclusion, and so explains the case before us.” Granting that the major premise involves the minor premise and conclusion, that is just the reason why it is imperative to express them. The meaning of the Syllogism is that it analyses the whole actual thought; the fault is to suppose that novelty is the point of inference. The Syllogism shows you how you must understand either premise in order that it may cover {150} the conclusion. Or, starting from the conclusion as a current popular belief, or as an isolated observation or suggestion by an individual observer (and this is practically the way in which our science on any subject as a rule takes its rise), the characteristic process through the three stages described above consists in first noting the given circumstances under which, according to the _prima facie_ belief or observation, the conjunction in question takes place (“yesterday,” _i.e._ “in the state of the atmosphere yesterday”); secondly in analysing or considering those given circumstances, to find within them something which looks like a general property, a law, or causal operation, which may attach the conjunction in question to the systematic whole of our experience (the presence of something heavier than air in the atmosphere); and thirdly, in the exhibition of this ground or reason as a principle, in the light of which the primary belief or observation (probably a good deal modified) becomes a part of our systematic intelligible world. {151} LECTURE X INDUCTION, DEDUCTION, AND CAUSATION _Induction_ [1]