XIX. disposed to predicate of it extreme simplicity." In LECT. point of fact, we might arrange the Epicheirema and Sorites with far greater propriety under elliptical syllogisms, than, as is commonly done by logicians, under the pleonastic. This last classification is, indeed, altogether erroneous, for it is a great mistake to suppose that in either of these forms there is aught redundant. a [See Leibnitz, Nouveaux Essais, ed. Raspe.] L. iv. c. xvii. § 4, pp. 445, 446, 448, VOL. I. XX. LECTURE XX. STOICHEIOLOGY. SECT. II.-OF THE PRODUCTS OF THOUGHT. III. DOCTRINE OF REASONINGS. SYLLOGISMS.-THEIR DIVISIONS ACCORDING TO EXTERNAL FORM. B. DEFECTIVE, ENTHYMEME. C. REGULAR AND IRREGULAR,—FIGURE AND MOOD. I PROCEED now to the Second Class of Syllogisms,— those, to wit, whose External Form is defective. This gisms defec. class I give in conformity to the doctrine of modern ternal Form, logicians, whose unanimous opinion on the subject I shall comprehend in the following paragraph. tive in Ex Par. LXXII. meme. ¶ LXXII. According to logicians in general, a defective syllogism is a reasoning in which one only of the premises is actually enounced. It is, therefore, they say, called an Enthymeme (v0úunua), because there is, as it were, something held back in the mind (ev Ovu). But as it is possible to retain either the sumption or the subsumption, the Enthymeme is thus of two kinds :-an Enthymeme of the First, and an Enthymeme of the Second, Order. The whole distinction is, however, erroneous in principle, and, even if not XX. erroneous, it is incomplete; for a Third Order of LECT. The com with mon doc trine of the with Enthymeme futile, and attributed Such, as it is stated in the former part of the para- Explication. graph, is the doctrine you will find maintained singular unanimity by modern logicians; and, hardly an exception, this classification of syllogisms is erroneously stated not only without a suspicion of its own cor- to Aristotle. rectness, but as a division established on the authority of the great father of logic himself. In both assertions they are, however, wrong, for the classification itself is futile, and Aristotle affords it no countenance; while, at the same time, if a distinction of syllogisms is to be taken from the ellipsis of their propositions, the subdivision of enthymemes is not complete, inasmuch as a syllogism may exist with both premises expressed, and the conclusion understood. I shall, therefore, in the first place, show that the Enthymeme, as a syllogism of a defective enouncement, constitutes no special form of reasoning; in the second, that Aristotle does not consider a syllogism of such a character as such a special form; and, in the third, that, admitting the validity of the distinction, the restriction of the Enthymeme to a syllogism of one suppressed premise cannot be competently maintained. thymeme cial form of "I. In regard then to the validity of the distinction. I. The EnThis is disproved on the following grounds: First of not a speall, the discrimination of the Enthymeme, as a syllo- reasoning. gism of one suppressed premise, from the ordinary syllogism, would involve a discrimination of the reasoning of Logic from the reasoning in common use ; a Compare Discussions, p. 153 et seq.-ED. XX. LECT. for, in general reasoning, we rarely express all the propositions of a syllogism, and it is almost only in the treatises on Abstract Logic, that we find examples of reasoning in which all the members are explicitly enounced. But Logic does not create new forms of syllogism, it merely expounds those which are already given; and while it shows that in all reasoning there are, in the mental process, necessarily three judgments, the mere non-expression of any of these in language, no more constitutes in Logic a particular kind of syllogism, than does the ellipsis of a term constitute in Grammar a particular kind of concord or government. But, secondly, Syllogism and Enthymeme are not distinguished as respectively an intralogical and an extralogical form; both are supposed equally logical. Those who defend the distinction are, therefore, necessarily compelled to maintain, that Logic regards the accident of the external expression, and not the essence of the internal thought, in holding that the Enthymeme is really a defective reasoning." tinction of meme as a special form of It thus appears, that to constitute the Enthymeme as a species of reasoning distinct from Syllogisms Proper, by the difference of perfect and imperfect, is of all absurdities the greatest.-But is this absurdity the work of Aristotle ?—and this leads us to the second head. II. The dis- II. Without entering upon a regular examination the Euthy of the various passages of the Aristotelic treatises relative to this point, I may observe, in the first place, reasoning that Aristotle expressly declares in general, that a Aristotle. syllogism is considered by the logician, not in relation to its expression (οὐ πρὸς τὸν ἔξω λόγον), but not made by a [That Syllogism and Enthymeme are not properly distinct species of reasoning, see Derodon, Logica Restituta, Pars V. tract. i. c. 1, p. 602.] a XX. meme of what. exclusively as a mental process (ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὸν ἐν τῇ LECT. x λóyov). The distinction, therefore, of a class of syllogisms as founded on a verbal accident, he thus of course, implicitly and by anticipation, condemns. But Aristotle, in the second place, does distinguish the The EnthyEnthymeme as a certain kind of syllogism,-as a syl- Aristotle,logism of a peculiar matter,-as a syllogism from signs and likelihoods. Now if, having done this, it were held that Aristotle over and above distinguished the Enthymeme also as a syllogism with one suppressed premise, Aristotle must be supposed to define the Enthymeme by two differences, and by two differences which have no mutual analogy; for a syllogism from signs and likelihoods does not more naturally fall into an elliptical form than a syllogism of any other matter. Yet this absurdity has been and is almost universally believed of the acutest of human intellects, and on grounds which, when examined, afford not the slightest warrant for such a conclusion. On the criticism of these grounds it would be out of place here to enter. Suffice it to say, that the texts in the Organon and Rhetoric, which may be adduced in support of the vulgar opinion, will bear no such interpretation ;that in one passage, where the word areλns (imperfect) is applied to the Enthymeme, this word, if genuine, need signify only that the reasoning from signs and probabilities affords not a perfect or necessary inference; but that, in point of fact, the word άTeλns is there a manifest interpolation, made to accommodate the Aristotelic to the common doctrine of the Enthymeme, for it is not extant in the oldest manuscripts, and has, accordingly, without any reference to the present question, been ejected from the a Anal. Post., i. 10.-ED. B Anal. Prior., ii. 27; Rhet., i. 2.—ED. |