A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive · John Stuart Mill
FOURTH FIGURE.
All C is B All C is B Some C is B No C is B No C is B All B is A No B is A All B is A All B is A Some B is A therefore therefore therefore therefore therefore Some A is C Some A is Some A is C Some A is Some A is not C not C not C In these exemplars, or blank forms for making syllogisms, no place is assigned to _singular_ propositions; not, of course, because such propositions are not used in ratiocination, but because, their predicate being affirmed or denied of the whole of the subject, they are ranked, for the purposes of the syllogism, with universal propositions. Thus, these two syllogisms— All men are mortal, All men are mortal, All kings are men, Socrates is a man, therefore therefore All kings are mortal, Socrates is mortal, are arguments precisely similar, and are both ranked in the first mood of the first figure.(50) The reasons why syllogisms in any of the above forms are legitimate, that is, why, if the premises are true, the conclusion must inevitably be so, and why this is not the case in any other possible mood (that is, in any other combination of universal and particular, affirmative and negative propositions), any person taking interest in these inquiries may be presumed to have either learned from the common-school books of the syllogistic logic, or to be capable of discovering for himself. The reader may, however, be referred, for every needful explanation, to Archbishop Whately’s _Elements of Logic_, where he will find stated with philosophical precision, and explained with remarkable perspicuity, the whole of the common doctrine of the syllogism.
Aristides was virtuous, Aristides was a pagan, therefore Some pagan was virtuous, would be a more natural mode of stating the argument, and would carry conviction more instantly home, than the same ratiocination strained into the first figure, thus— Aristides was virtuous, Some pagan was Aristides, therefore Some pagan was virtuous. A German philosopher, Lambert, whose _Neues Organon_ (published in the year 1764) contains among other things one of the most elaborate and complete expositions which had ever been made of the syllogistic doctrine, has expressly examined what sort of arguments fall most naturally and suitably into each of the four figures; and his investigation is characterized by great ingenuity and clearness of thought.(51) The argument, however, is one and the same, in whichever figure it is expressed; since, as we have already seen, the premises of a syllogism in the second, third, or fourth figure, and those of the syllogism in the first figure to which it may be reduced, are the same premises in every thing except language, or, at least, as much of them as contributes to the proof of the conclusion is the same. We are therefore at liberty, in conformity with the general opinion of logicians, to consider the two elementary forms of the first figure as the universal types of all correct ratiocination; the one, when the conclusion to be proved is affirmative, the other, when it is negative; even though certain arguments may have a tendency to clothe themselves in the forms of the second, third, and fourth figures; which, however, can not possibly happen with the only class of arguments which are of first-rate scientific importance, those in which the conclusion is a universal affirmative, such conclusions being susceptible of proof in the first figure alone.(52)
This maxim, however, when considered as a principle of reasoning, appears suited to a system of metaphysics once indeed generally received, but which for the last two centuries has been considered as finally abandoned, though there have not been wanting in our own day attempts at its revival. So long as what are termed Universals were regarded as a peculiar kind of substances, having an objective existence distinct from the individual objects classed under them, the _dictum de omni_ conveyed an important meaning; because it expressed the intercommunity of nature, which it was necessary on that theory that we should suppose to exist between those general substances and the particular substances which were subordinated to them. That every thing predicable of the universal was predicable of the various individuals contained under it, was then no identical proposition, but a statement of what was conceived as a fundamental law of the universe. The assertion that the entire nature and properties of the _substantia secunda_ formed part of the nature and properties of each of the individual substances called by the same name; that the properties of Man, for example, were properties of all men; was a proposition of real significance when man did not _mean_ all men, but something inherent in men, and vastly superior to them in dignity.
Now, however, when it is known that a class, a universal, a genus or species, is not an entity _per se_, but neither more nor less than the individual substances themselves which are placed in the class, and that there is nothing real in the matter except those objects, a common name given to them, and common attributes indicated by the name; what, I should be glad to know, do we learn by being told, that whatever can be affirmed of a class, may be affirmed of every object contained in the class? The class _is_ nothing but the objects contained in it: and the _dictum de omni_ merely amounts to the identical proposition, that whatever is true of certain objects, is true of each of those objects. If all ratiocination were no more than the application of this maxim to particular cases, the syllogism would indeed be, what it has so often been declared to be, solemn trifling. The _dictum de omni_ is on a par with another truth, which in its time was also reckoned of great importance, “Whatever is, is.” To give any real meaning to the _dictum de omni_, we must consider it not as an axiom, but as a definition; we must look upon it as intended to explain, in a circuitous and paraphrastic manner, the meaning of the word _class_.
An error which seemed finally refuted and dislodged from thought, often needs only put on a new suit of phrases, to be welcomed back to its old quarters, and allowed to repose unquestioned for another cycle of ages. Modern philosophers have not been sparing in their contempt for the scholastic dogma that genera and species are a peculiar kind of substances, which general substances being the only permanent things, while the individual substances comprehended under them are in a perpetual flux, knowledge, which necessarily imports stability, can only have relation to those general substances or universals, and not to the facts or particulars included under them. Yet, though nominally rejected, this very doctrine, whether disguised under the Abstract Ideas of Locke (whose speculations, however, it has less vitiated than those of perhaps any other writer who has been infected with it), under the ultra-nominalism of Hobbes and Condillac, or the ontology of the later German schools, has never ceased to poison philosophy.
Once accustomed to consider scientific investigation as essentially consisting in the study of universals, men did not drop this habit of thought when they ceased to regard universals as possessing an independent existence: and even those who went the length of considering them as mere names, could not free themselves from the notion that the investigation of truth consisted entirely or partly in some kind of conjuration or juggle with those names. When a philosopher adopted fully the Nominalist view of the signification of general language, retaining along with it the _dictum de omni_ as the foundation of all reasoning, two such premises fairly put together were likely, if he was a consistent thinker, to land him in rather startling conclusions. Accordingly it has been seriously held, by writers of deserved celebrity, that the process of arriving at new truths by reasoning consists in the mere substitution of one set of arbitrary signs for another; a doctrine which they suppose to derive irresistible confirmation from the example of algebra. If there were any process in sorcery or necromancy more preternatural than this, I should be much surprised.
The culminating point of this philosophy is the noted aphorism of Condillac, that a science is nothing, or scarcely any thing, but _une langue bien faite_; in other words, that the one sufficient rule for discovering the nature and properties of objects is to name them properly: as if the reverse were not the truth, that it is impossible to name them properly except in proportion as we are already acquainted with their nature and properties. Can it be necessary to say, that none, not even the most trivial knowledge with respect to Things, ever was or could be originally got at by any conceivable manipulation of mere names, as such; and that what can be learned from names, is only what somebody who used the names knew before? Philosophical analysis confirms the indication of common sense, that the function of names is but that of enabling us to _remember_ and to _communicate_ our thoughts. That they also strengthen, even to an incalculable extent, the power of thought itself, is most true: but they do this by no intrinsic and peculiar virtue; they do it by the power inherent in an artificial memory, an instrument of which few have adequately considered the immense potency. As an artificial memory, language truly is, what it has so often been called, an instrument of thought; but it is one thing to be the instrument, and another to be the exclusive subject upon which the instrument is exercised. We think, indeed, to a considerable extent, by means of names, but what we think of, are the things called by those names; and there can not be a greater error than to imagine that thought can be carried on with nothing in our mind but names, or that we can make the names think for us.
Applying this view of propositions to the two premises of a syllogism, we obtain the following results. The major premise, which, as already remarked, is always universal, asserts, that all things which have a certain attribute (or attributes) have or have not along with it, a certain other attribute (or attributes). The minor premise asserts that the thing or set of things which are the subject of that premise, have the first-mentioned attribute; and the conclusion is, that they have (or that they have not), the second. Thus in our former example, All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal, the subject and predicate of the major premise are connotative terms, denoting objects and connoting attributes. The assertion in the major premise is, that along with one of the two sets of attributes, we always find the other: that the attributes connoted by “man” never exist unless conjoined with the attribute called mortality. The assertion in the minor premise is that the individual named Socrates possesses the former attributes; and it is concluded that he possesses also the attribute mortality. Or, if both the premises are general propositions, as All men are mortal, All kings are men, therefore All kings are mortal, the minor premise asserts that the attributes denoted by kingship only exist in conjunction with those signified by the word man. The major asserts as before, that the last-mentioned attributes are never found without the attribute of mortality. The conclusion is, that wherever the attributes of kingship are found, that of mortality is found also.
If the major premise were negative, as, No men are omnipotent, it would assert, not that the attributes connoted by “man” never exist without, but that they never exist with, those connoted by “omnipotent:” from which, together with the minor premise, it is concluded, that the same incompatibility exists between the attribute omnipotence and those constituting a king. In a similar manner we might analyze any other example of the syllogism. If we generalize this process, and look out for the principle or law involved in every such inference, and presupposed in every syllogism, the propositions of which are any thing more than merely verbal; we find, not the unmeaning _dictum de omni et nullo_, but a fundamental principle, or rather two principles, strikingly resembling the axioms of mathematics. The first, which is the principle of affirmative syllogisms, is, that things which co-exist with the same thing, co-exist with one another: or (still more precisely) a thing which co-exists with another thing, which other co-exists with a third thing, also co-exists with that third thing. The second is the principle of negative syllogisms, and is to this effect: that a thing which co-exists with another thing, with which other a third thing does not co-exist, is not co-existent with that third thing. These axioms manifestly relate to facts, and not to conventions; and one or other of them is the ground of the legitimacy of every argument in which facts and not conventions are the matter treated of.(53)
And again, The attributes of man are a mark of the attribute mortality, The attributes of a king are a mark of the attributes of man, therefore The attributes of a king are a mark of the attribute mortality. And, lastly, The attributes of man are a mark of the absence of the attribute omnipotence, The attributes of a king are a mark of the attributes of man, therefore The attributes of a king are a mark of the absence of the attribute signified by the word omnipotent (or, are evidence of the absence of that attribute). To correspond with this alteration in the form of the syllogisms, the axioms on which the syllogistic process is founded must undergo a corresponding transformation. In this altered phraseology, both those axioms may be brought under one general expression; namely, that whatever has any mark, has that which it is a mark of. Or, when the minor premise as well as the major is universal, we may state it thus: Whatever is a mark of any mark, is a mark of that which this last is a mark of. To trace the identity of these axioms with those previously laid down, may be left to the intelligent reader. We shall find, as we proceed, the great convenience of the phraseology into which we have last thrown them, and which is better adapted than any I am acquainted with, to express with precision and force what is aimed at, and actually accomplished, in every case of the ascertainment of a truth by ratiocination.(55)
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