(ii) As regards Deduction, the business of Reason is to ascertain that
the Premises are not only true but also connected in such a way that a
conclusion can be drawn from them. But even here Imagination plays a
part: for the conclusion of every syllogism (roughly speaking) depends
upon the following axiom: “If _a_ is included in _b_, and _b_ is
included in _c_, then _a_ is included in _c_; in other words, if a watch
is in a box, and the box is in a room, then the watch is in the room.”
Now this general proposition, like all general propositions, is arrived
at with the aid of the Imagination, so that we may fairly say that the
Imagination, helps to lay the foundation of the Syllogism. When
therefore you bear in mind that in every Syllogism the Premises are
often the result of an Induction in which Imagination has played a part,
and that the conclusion always depends upon an axiom of the Imagination,
you must admit that even Deductive Reasoning by no means excludes the
Imagination.
(iii) Practically, errors seldom arise, and truth is seldom discovered,
from mere Deductive Reasoning. Any one can see his way through a logical
Syllogism, and almost any one can lay his finger on the weak point in an
illogical one. But the difficulty is to start the Reasoning in the right
direction and to begin the Logical Chain with an appropriate Syllogism.
For example, suppose we wish to prove that “every triangle which has two
angles equal, has two sides opposite to them equal”: how can our Reason,
our discriminative faculty, help us here? At present, not at all. We
must first call to our aid the Imagination, which says to us, “_Imagine_
the triangle with two equal angles to have two unequal sides opposite to
them, and see what follows.” And every one who has done a geometrical
Deduction knows that we frequently start by “imagining” the conclusion
to be already proved, or the problem to be already performed, and then
endeavouring to realise, among the many consequences that would follow,
which of those consequences would harmonize with, or be identical with,
the data to which we are working back.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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