This contradiction in the syllogism exhibits a new case of the infinite
progression. Each of the premisses evidently calls for a fresh
syllogism to demonstrate it: and as the new syllogism has two immediate
premisses, like its predecessor, the demand for proof is doubled at
every step, and repeated without end.
186.] On account of its importance for experience, there has been
here noted a defect in the syllogism, to which in this form absolute
correctness had been ascribed. This defect however must lose itself in
the further specification of the syllogism. For we are now within the
sphere of the notion; and here therefore, as well as in the judgment,
the opposite character is not merely present potentially, but is
explicit. To work out the gradual specification of the syllogism,
therefore, there need only be admitted and accepted what is at each
step realised by the syllogism itself.
Through the immediate syllogism I--P--U, the Individual is mediated
(through a Particular) with the Universal, and in this conclusion put
as a universal. It follows that the individual subject, becoming itself
a universal, serves to unite the two extremes, and to form their ground
of intermediation. This gives the second figure of the syllogism, (2)
U--I--P. It expresses the truth of the first; it shows in other words
that the intermediation has taken place in the individual, and is thus
something contingent.
187.] The universal, which in the first conclusion was specified
through individuality, passes over into the second figure and there
now occupies the place that belonged to the immediate subject. In the
second figure it is concluded with the particular. By this conclusion
therefore the universal is explicitly put as particular--and is now
made to mediate between the two extremes, the places of which are
occupied by the two others (the particular and the individual). This is
the third figure of the syllogism: (3) P--U--I.
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