[8] It is hardly necessary to say, that I am not contending for any such absurdity as that we _actually_ "ought to have known" and considered the case of every individual man, past, present, and future, before affirming that all men are mortal: although this interpretation has been, strangely enough, put upon the preceding observations. There is no difference between me and Archbishop Whately, or any other defender of the syllogism, on the practical part of the matter; I am only pointing out an inconsistency in the logical theory of it, as conceived by almost all writers. I do not say that a person who affirmed, before the Duke of Wellington was born, that all men are mortal, _knew_ that the Duke of Wellington was mortal; but I do say that he _asserted_ it; and I ask for an explanation of the apparent logical fallacy, of adducing in proof of the Duke of Wellington's mortality, a general statement which presupposes it. Finding no sufficient resolution of this difficulty in any of the writers on Logic, I have attempted to supply one. [9] The language of ratiocination would, I think, be brought into closer agreement with the real nature of the process, if the general propositions employed in reasoning, instead of being in the form All men are mortal, or Every man is mortal, were expressed in the form Any man is mortal. This mode of expression, exhibiting as the type of all reasoning from experience "The men A, B, C, &c. are so and so, therefore _any_ man is so and so," would much better manifest the true idea--that inductive reasoning is always, at bottom, inference from particulars to particulars, and that the whole function of general propositions in reasoning, is to vouch for the legitimacy of such inferences. [10] Review of Quetelet on Probabilities, _Essays_, p. 367. [11] _Philosophy of Discovery_, p. 289. [12] _Theory of Reasoning_, ch. iv. to which I may refer for an able statement and enforcement of the grounds of the doctrine. [13] It is very probable that the doctrine is not new, and that it was, as Sir John Herschel thinks, substantially anticipated by Berkeley. But I certainly am not aware that it is (as has been affirmed by one of my ablest and most candid critics) "among the standing marks of what is called the empirical philosophy." [14] _Logic_, book iv. ch. i. sect. 1. [15] See the important chapter on Belief, in Professor Bain's great treatise, _The Emotions and the Will_, pp. 581-4.