But that this is a mistake will appear, if we consider,
that the reason why sometimes men who sincerely aim at truth are
imposed upon by such loose, and, as they are called, rhetorical
discourses, is, that their fancies being struck with some lively
metaphorical representations, they neglect to observe, or do not
easily perceive, what are the true ideas upon which the inference
depends. Now, to show such men the weakness of such an
argumentation, there needs no more but to strip if of the
superfluous ideas, which, blended and confounded with those on which
the inference depends, seem to show a connexion where there is none;
or at least to hinder the discovery of the want of it; and then to lay
the naked ideas on which the force of the argumentation depends in
their due order; in which position the mind, taking a view of them,
sees what connexion they have, and so is able to judge of the
inference without any need of a syllogism at all.
I grant that mode and figure is commonly made use of in such
cases, as if the detection of the incoherence of such loose discourses
were wholly owing to the syllogistical form; and so I myself
formerly thought, till, upon a stricter examination, I now find,
that laying the intermediate ideas naked in their due order, shows the
incoherence of the argumentation better than syllogism; not only as
subjecting each link of the chain to the immediate view of the mind in
its proper place, whereby its connexion is best observed; but also
because syllogism shows the incoherence only to those (who are not one
of ten thousand) who perfectly understand mode and figure, and the
reason upon which those forms are established; whereas a due and
orderly placing of the ideas upon which the inference is made, makes
every one, whether logician or not logician, who understands the
terms, and hath the faculty to perceive the agreement or
disagreement of such ideas, (without which, in or out of syllogism, he
cannot perceive the strength or weakness, coherence or incoherence
of the discourse) see the want of connexion in the argumentation,
and the absurdity of the inference.
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