Archbishop Whately has contended that syllogising, or reasoning from generals to particulars, is not, agreeably to the vulgar idea, a peculiar _mode_ of reasoning, but the philosophical analysis of _the_ mode in which all men reason, and must do so if they reason at all. With the deference due to so high an authority, I cannot help thinking that the vulgar notion is, in this case, the more correct. If, from our experience of John, Thomas, &c., who once were living, but are now dead, we are entitled to conclude that all human beings are mortal, we might surely without any logical inconsequence have concluded at once from those instances, that the Duke of Wellington is mortal. The mortality of John, Thomas, and company is, after all, the whole evidence we have for the mortality of the Duke of Wellington. Not one iota is added to the proof by interpolating a general proposition. Since the individual cases are all the evidence we can possess, evidence which no logical form into which we choose to throw it can make greater than it is; and since that evidence is either sufficient in itself, or, if insufficient for the one purpose, cannot be sufficient for the other; I am unable to see why we should be forbidden to take the shortest cut from these sufficient premisses to the conclusion, and constrained to travel the “high priori road,” by the arbitrary fiat of logicians. I cannot perceive why it should be impossible to journey from one place to another unless we “march up a hill, and then march down again.” It may be the safest road, and there may be a resting place at the top of the hill, affording a commanding view of the surrounding country; but for the mere purpose of arriving at our journey’s end, our taking that road is perfectly optional; it is a question of time, trouble, and danger.