regard him, nor is affected as to its truth or falsity by anything in which he is concerned. The difference between the reviewer's theory and mine may be thus stated. Both admit that when we say, All men are mortal, we make an assertion reaching beyond the sphere of our knowledge of individual cases; and that when a new individual, Socrates, is brought within the field of our knowledge by means of the minor premise, we learn that we have already made an assertion respecting Socrates without knowing it: our own general formula being, to that extent, for the first time _interpreted_ to us. But according to the reviewer's theory, the smaller assertion is proved by the larger: while I contend, that both assertions are proved together, by the same evidence, namely, the grounds of experience on which the general assertion was made, and by which it must be justified. The reviewer says, that if the major premise included the conclusion, "we should be able to affirm the conclusion without the intervention of the minor premise; but every one sees that that is impossible." A similar argument is urged by Mr. De Morgan (_Formal Logic_, p. 259): "The whole objection tacitly assumes the superfluity of the minor; that is, tacitly assumes we know Socrates[46] to be a man as soon as we know him to be Socrates." The objection would be well grounded if the assertion that the major premise includes the conclusion, meant that it individually specifies all it includes. As however the only indication it gives is a description by marks, we have still to compare any new individual with the marks; and to show that this comparison has been made, is the office of the minor. But since, by supposition, the new individual has the marks, whether we have ascertained him to have them or not; if we have affirmed the major premise, we have asserted him to be mortal. Now my position is that this assertion cannot be a necessary part of the argument. It cannot be a necessary condition of reasoning that we should begin by making an assertion, which is afterwards to be employed in proving a part of itself. I can conceive only one way out of this difficulty, viz. that what really forms the proof is _the other_ part of the assertion; the portion of it, the truth of which has been ascertained previously: and that the unproved part is bound up in one formula with the proved part in mere anticipation, and as a memorandum of the nature of the conclusions which we are prepared to prove.