reasoning, and much more so to apply the assertion to all reasoning whatever.

An analysis of reasoning ought to be an account of what takes place in the mind when it draws an inference, or is determined to a conclusion. Now from the preceding representations, it is manifest that a single fact or combination of facts, capable of being expressed in one proposition, frequently determines the mind to a conclusion without reference to any thing else. This is the whole of which the mind is conscious, or which can be discerned as having taken place on reflection.

Supplying in such cases the missing premise, as it is called, when it is not introducing a identical assertion, is simply stating a certain proposition which may be enunciated with truth if the argument is valid, but which neither forms nor represents any part of the mental process. To contend that a second premise is necessary to the completion of an argument, because it may by some expedient or other always be added to it, is like contending that a shawl is an indispensable part of a lady's dress because it may always be thrown over every thing else in which she may be attired.

This introduction of two premises is in many arguments proper and needful, but in some it is mere impertinence or supererogation, and in others nothing more than the obtrusion of identical propositions.

CHAP. VIII.

PRIMARY OR ORIGINAL PREMISES.

THE preceding chapters have endeavoured to show, amongst other things, that what are termed principles of reasoning, or maxims, give no force to arguments. They do not constitute real premises in any case, and cannot, therefore, be the original premises from which we set out.

What, then, it may be asked, are the primary propositions with which our reasonings commence?

To this inquiry, it may be at once replied, that, with the exceptions to be hereafter named, we always commence with particular facts; or, to express it more precisely, that particular facts, or propositions expressive of them, are, in every case, taking into view the whole train of reasoning from beginning to end, the first premises from which we start, and the ultimate ground at which, in tracing back our reasonings, we invariably arrive.

It has been said, indeed, in contrariety to this, that all our reasonings about events, if traced back to their origin, will be found to rest on the maxim or general principle, as a major premise, that similar causes produce similar effects, and that all our reasonings in mathematics rest in the same way on the several axioms of that science.

But, as I have already shown, these general principles and axioms are educed from particular arguments or instances of implication; and, if this is true, they cannot precede such arguments, nor constitute the original premises from which any conclusions are inferred.

Nor can those general propositions which really form constituent parts of our reasonings, be the original premises inquired for.

In contingent reasoning, as already explained, it is from particular facts that we form or infer a general law; and, although we may subsequently use the general law as a premise from which to deduce particular conclusions, the whole reasoning rests on the first facts, and the general law is only an intermediate proposition.

In demonstrative reasoning the same position is equally true. At the outset it is always in one or more particular facts that we discern another particular fact to be implied; and it is from such particular implications that we form those general propositions which we use in subsequent deductions. From discerning an implication in one instance we discern that it must have place in all like instances. Hence neither axioms, nor general laws obtained by contingent reasoning, nor general propositions employed in demonstrative reasoning, can be primary or original premises.

I am here speaking, on the supposition of the whole of a train of reasoning being gone through

by the same mind, or, to state the matter differently, I am speaking as if the whole race of thinkers constituted one individual.

Practically we take general propositions or laws from various sources without going back to their origin- from authority, or testimony, or hypothesis, and reason from them without hesitation: and if such propositions are furnished to us from a source beyond which we cannot ascend, as, for example, by revelation from a superior intelligence, they are to mankind original major premises, and form exceptions to the doctrine that we always commence with particular facts.

Every man, indeed, is in a position analogous to this with regard to general laws on subjects which he has not himself investigated, inasmuch as his want of knowledge precludes him from ascending to the primary facts from which they are inferred.

Another source of general propositions not obtained from particular facts, and serving as original major premises, is to be found in civil laws, commands, directions, and rules of conduct generally. This is a most extensive source of premises, from which we deduce conclusions in practical life; and although it has obviously nothing to do with the acquisition of science, the reasoning is precisely on a level with that in which the premises are obtained by what logicians term complete enumeration, or by geometrical inference.

"If," says Mr. Stewart, "there are any parts of

science in which the syllogism can be advantageously applied, it must be those where our judgments are formed in consequence of an application to particular cases of certain maxims [general propositions] which we are not at liberty to dispute. An example of this occurs in the practice of law. Here the particular conclusion must be regulated by the general principle, whether right or wrong. The case was similar in every branch of philosophy, as long as the authority of great names prevailed, and the old scholastic maxims were allowed, without examination, to pass as incontrovertible truths."*

The doctrine which so long predominated, and which still continues to be held by philosophers at large, that all our reasonings must be founded on general principles or propositions, or, in other words, that all our conclusions may be traced back

* Elements of Philosophy, vol. ii. p. 286. This case of general propositions being sometimes given to us, forming an exception to the doctrine that the original premises in our reasonings are particular facts, has also been well explained by Mr. John Mill in his System of Logic, vol. i. 260. Mr. Smart expresses the general doctrine of this chapter with clearness and precision. After remarking that in tracing back our inferences we must come at last to something not an inference, he continues: "Now this ultimate ground can consist of nothing but particular or individual truths, for which we have the evidence of our senses or our consciousness." - Practical Logic, p. 35. Locke (although the remark is made in a different connection) observes that "the immediate object of all our reason and knowledge is nothing but particulars."-Essay, book iv. chap. 17.

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