That the mind only doth
or can perceive as they stand there in that juxta-position by its
own view, to which the syllogistical form it happens to be in gives no
help or light at all: it only shows that if the intermediate idea
agrees with those it is on both sides immediately applied to; then
those two remote ones, or, as they are called, extremes, do
certainly agree; and therefore the immediate connexion of each idea to
that which it is applied to on each side, on which the force of the
reasoning depends, is as well seen before as after the syllogism is
made, or else he that makes the syllogism could never see it at all.
This, as has been already observed, is seen only by the eye, or the
perceptive faculty, of the mind, taking a view of them laid
together, in a juxta-position; which view of any two it has equally,
whenever they are laid together in any proposition, whether that
proposition be placed as a major or a minor, in a syllogism or no.
Use of syllogism. Of what use, then are syllogisms? I answer,
their chief and main use is in the Schools, where men are allowed
without shame to deny the agreement of ideas that do manifestly agree;
or out of the Schools, to those who from thence have learned without
shame to deny the connexion of ideas, which even to themselves is
visible. But to an ingenuous searcher after truth, who has no other
aim but to find it, there is no need of any such form to force the
allowing of the inference: the truth and reasonableness of it is
better seen in ranging of the ideas in a simple and plain order: and
hence it is that men, in their own inquiries after truth, never use
syllogisms to convince themselves or in teaching others to instruct
willing learners.
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