The rules of syllogism serve not
to furnish the mind with those intermediate ideas that may show the
connexion of remote ones. This way of reasoning discovers no new
proofs, but is the art of marshalling and ranging the old ones we have
already. The forty-seventh proposition of the first book of Euclid
is very true; but the discovery of it, I think, not owing to any rules
of common logic. A man knows first, and then he is able to prove
syllogistically. So that syllogism comes after knowledge, and then a
man has little or no need of it. But it is chiefly by the finding
out those ideas that show the connexion of distant ones, that our
stock of knowledge is increased, and that useful arts and sciences are
advanced. Syllogism, at best, is but the art of fencing with the
little knowledge we have, without making any addition to it. And if
a man should employ his reason all this way, he will not do much
otherwise than he who, having got some iron out of the bowels of the
earth, should have it beaten up all into swords, and put it into his
servants' hands to fence with and bang one another. Had the King of
Spain employed the hands of his people, and his Spanish iron so, he
had brought to light but little of that treasure that lay so long
hid in the dark entrails of America. And I am apt to think, that he
who shall employ all the force of his reason only in brandishing of
syllogisms, will discover very little of that mass of knowledge
which lies yet concealed in the secret recesses of nature; and
which, I am apt to think, native rustic reason (as it formerly has
done) is likelier to open a way to, and add to the common stock of
mankind, rather than any scholastic proceeding by the strict rules
of mod, and figure.
Pages:
1004
1005
1006
1007
1008
1009
1010
1011
1012
1013
1014
1015
1016
1017
1018
1019
1020
1021
1022
1023
1024
1025
1026
1027
1028