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ment to which its own theory has confined it; to inquire how efficiently it performs its part in the limited province which logicians so long mistook for the whole domain of reasoning. And when (as I further purpose to do) I have followed up this examination, and my previous exposition of the principles and forms of reasoning, by some remarks on the value of the system as externally manifested by its effects in action and in science, and on its influence as an intellectual discipline, I shall have taken a survey of its most important features.

SECTION III.

Subject continued: Mode of using the Syllogistic Form.

In order to clear the way for the inquiry proposed in the last section, it is necessary to premise that there are two different views entertained or entertainable of the way in which the syllogistic form ought to be employed.

One of these views regards the regular syllogism as a method of arguing which is to be commonly adopted.

The other regards it simply as a form into which any arguments may be thrown for the purpose of testing their validity, and disclaims it as the ordinary instrument of reasoning or controversy.

With regard to the first, which was the view

that long prevailed in the schools, it is obvious, to modern eyes, that to adopt the syllogism as the ordinary method of conducting argumentation, even on the supposition of its being the universal type of reasoning, would be excessively tedious and embarrassing; and, indeed, at the present stage of intellectual advancement, impracticable.

This view, accordingly, of the proper method of applying the syllogistic art is now not only abandoned, but we are told that "it is a mistake to suppose that Aristotle and other logicians meant to propose that this prolix form of unfolding arguments should universally supersede, in argumentative discourses, the common forms of expression."

Whatever may be the light in which modern writers may regard the subject, this prolix form, nevertheless, was not only for a long period used in the schools, as the most efficient instrument of controversy, and the best method of pursuing truth, but even so late as the early part of the eighteenth century, the utility of carrying on a controversy in writing by a mutual exchange of syllogisms, and with a strict observance of the legitimate forms, was maintained by no less a philosopher than Leibnitz.

Since, however, the common employment of the syllogistic form in argumentative discourse or controversy is no longer advocated, it must be examined in the character in which it presents itself

to us in the writings of its modern expositors; namely, as a form into which reasoning may be reduced in order that the rules of logic may be applied as tests for trying the validity of arguments. Its claims are thus stated by one of the most eminent amongst the logical writers of the day. "Logic," says Dr. Whately, "which is, as it were, the grammar of reasoning, does not bring forward the regular syllogism as a distinct mode of argumentation, designed to be substituted for any other mode, but as the form to which all correct reasoning may be ultimately reduced; and which, consequently, serves the purpose (when we are employing logic as an art) of a test to try the validity of any argument; in the same manner as by chemical analysis we develope and submit to a distinct examination the elements of which any compound body is composed, and are thus enabled to detect any latent sophistication and impurity."*

In this statement, however, of the mode in which the form is to be used, the syllogism itself is represented as a test, while it manifestly can be considered only as the shape into which class-reasoning may be put, in order to apply the several tests furnished by the rules of the art. It is not the bed on which the logical Procrustes is to lay his victims, but only the outstretched posture in which he is to place them upon it.

* Elements of Logic, p. 11

SECTION IV.

The Subject of Rules continued: Rules of the
Scholastic Logic.

AGREEABLY to what has been stated in the preceding section, we are now to consider the scholastic logic, as a guide to correct conclusions, by furnishing tests for the detection of fallacies in that variety of reasoning which comes under the designation of class-reasoning.

In this character the system might, perhaps, be reasonably expected to do two things; first, to give us directions for reducing, with all practicable readiness and precision, the arguments which we meet with, or which occur to us, into the syllogistic form; secondly, to furnish us with the best rules for testing the validity of the syllogisms when they are before us. In the first respect here mentioned, the common treatises on logic, as far as I am acquainted with them, afford us little help. Logicians may, perhaps, consider it as being, like the laying down of premises, out of their province; yet this, after all, is the great difficulty which the anxious searcher after right conclusions has to cope with. Generally speaking, the validity or invalidity of an argument is easy to be discerned when it has been stripped of un

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necessary incumbrances, and reduced to the form of two or three definite propositions.*

In reference to the second and easier assistance which the system ought to furnish, there is no similar deficiency. Logical treatises abound with rules for insuring the correctness of the syllogistic process, and the detection of errors in it. They give us copious directions how to deal with any syllogisms which may present themselves to our notice; they, in truth, encumber us with help, but with help of a peculiarly artificial character. The general scope, indeed, of the scholastic system may be described to be to enable us, by the adoption of technical language and distinctions, to apply mechanical rules to reasoning when it has been brought into the syllogistic form. The question we have now to try is not between rules and no rules, but between natural and artificial rules.

A recourse to mechanical rules in the way described, which is essentially an artificial method, in order to supersede the direct application of the mind to the subject in hand, which may be called the natural method, is in truth substituting processes requiring little or no thought when once learned, for such as demand conscious intelligence

* Perhaps the student might derive some useful hints towards this species of reduction from the Abbé Gaultier's ingenious work entitled "A Method of making Abridgments, or easy and certain Rules for analysing Authors." London, 1800.

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