On the above-mentioned theory of syllogism, as the rational form _par excellence,_ reason has been defined as the faculty of syllogising, whilst understanding is defined as the faculty of forming notions. We might object to the conception on which this depends, and according to which the mind is merely a sum of forces or faculties existing side by side. But apart from that objection, we may observe in regard to the parallelism of understanding with the notion, as well as of reason with syllogism, that the notion is as little a mere category of the understanding as the syllogism is without qualification definable as rational. For, in the first place, what the Formal Logic usually examines in its theory of syllogism, is really nothing but the mere syllogism of understanding, which has no claim to the honour of being made a form of rationality, still less to be held as the embodiment of all reason. The notion, in the second place, so far from being a form of understanding, owes its degradation to such a place entirely to the influence of that abstract mode of thought. And it is not unusual to draw such a distinction between a notion of understanding and a notion of reason. The distinction however does not mean that notions are of two kinds. It means that our own action often stops short at the mere negative and abstract form of the notion, when we might also have proceeded to apprehend the notion in its true nature, as at once positive and concrete. It is _e.g._ the mere understanding, which thinks liberty to be the abstract contrary of necessity, whereas the adequate rational notion of liberty requires the element of necessity to be merged in it. Similarly the definition of God, given by what is called Deism, is merely the mode in which the understanding thinks God: whereas Christianity, to which He is known as the Trinity, contains the rational notion of God. (α) _Qualitative Syllogism._ 183.] The first syllogism is a syllogism of definite being,--a Qualitative Syllogism, as stated in the last paragraph. Its form (1) is I--P--U: _i.e._ a subject as Individual is coupled (concluded) with a Universal character by means of a (Particular) quality. Of course the subject (_terminus minor_) has other characteristics besides individuality, just as the other extreme (the predicate of the conclusion, or _terminus major_) has other characteristics than mere universality. But here the interest turns only on the characteristics through which these terms make a syllogism.