## Examination of Mill's Logic

J. N. Darby.

<32007E> 80 {file section b.}

{A System of Logic, by John Stuart Mill, 8th edition.

The reader must bear in mind that these are only MSS notes jotted down while reading the book.}

Pages 108-9 are also false, because when I say all men are mortal, it is true that I speak of men as known by the attributes expressed by the word. But this is only the phenomenon presented to sense or matter of evidence. Hence I can only say that the connotation is of men as phenomenal here. Hence, really the subject of the proposition is taken strictly in its extension, not in all it does or may connote - all men who are the subject of my observation of men in general down here; and hence it is absolutely necessary to bring in extension strictly, for so only it is true. It is thought of only through the "intension" or attributes; but this only includes ordinary phenomenal man, and can only apply to those whom I know or see; that is, the proposition is TRUE ONLY as taken in extension. Add here, the proposition is only a conclusion from a particular to a universal, for the only phenomenon I have is death, not mortality. The extent of the class, therefore, is "apprehended and indicated directly "; for if I say man from phenomena or attributes, I take in only what is phenomenal. All the cases of ordinary phenomenal man we have seen have died; therefore phenomenal man is subject to death; the phenomenon has accompanied the other phenomena, but this strictly brings in extension. Phenomenal men are all that we speak of, and speak of all of them as such.

81 As to his minuter analysis (p. 119) of "prudence is a virtue," all is as usual vague and unsatisfactory. It gives definitions of virtue which are no equivalents at all; a virtue is not equivalent to a mental quality, etc. Just now prudence was equivalent to prudent persons or actions; they are not a mental quality. Nor is virtue a mental quality. Virtue gives a whole class and order and principle of conduct in spite of difficulties, and when he says a mental quality because prudence is one, he confounds the subject and predicate, because the definition must give the whole of what is defined; and if I say a mental quality, virtue is only one mental quality and if prudence is that, there is no other. His statement is that a mental quality is equivalent to or a definition of virtue - can take its place. But, further, it is not a cause of God's approval but the object of it, whatever causes Him so to approve it; nor, though it is not so thoroughly false, is a quality beneficial. Still beneficial refers to what the beneficial thing causes; approval is a state of mind in another caused by the motives which govern it. What he states of the ground or foundation of the prudence is the prudence itself. If these things are in a man, I say he is prudent, because they are prudence. But if no conduct follows, nothing is beneficial. What he calls facts or phenomena which are the ground of the attribute are no facts or phenomena, save as prudence itself is one. The whole statement is in the highest degree unsatisfactory. When I say "prudence is a virtue," I give a character to prudence, without any facts, phenomena, sequence, coexistence, causation, or resemblance whatever. He admits it does not involve any conduct; consequently there is nothing caused by it. When I say beneficial, I suppose some activity towards others, or deliberate abstinence from it in which others are concerned. Whereas prudence is merely an abstract quality, and I declare it a good one without any facts or phenomena.

But there is a use of logic flowing from classification which I must notice.* A main distinctive feature is taken to form an under-class or species, that is, the under-class is made by it of a wider class (or genus), and by this feature the class is denoted, as rational animal; and the subject comes under it, the predicate expressing the species and genus containing it, the class word forming the species expressing only a given important attribute of the class. But it is important to designate another attribute as belonging to the subject, one unknown to or unnoticed by the person reasoned with. That this other attribute exists in the predicate is affirmed in the minor, and so is affirmed of the subject. Thus, all men are mortal, that is, subject to death, but all mortal beings are so by living by blood (or by blood being their life): therefore all men live by blood. Now mortal, though forming a class, only speaks of liability to death; that is the meaning of the word and no more, and I say no more. I affirm a second truth in the minor - namely, how or why beings die or are subject to death, in no way comprised in the word mortal, but giving a reason for all mortality. The syllogism merely gives a secure method of affirming the facts so that the conclusion follows. The word mortal means something and only that, liability to death; but if man be in this class, mortal, and I shew that something else does belong always to this class, though not in thought contained in the word it is named by, I have added something to the knowledge contained in the major.**

{*Locke takes all the properties. Of this farther on. It is important to note that some predicates express only an attribute, as mortal, though a class may be made out of them; others are a class, as animal.}

{** All this on classification in Mill is wrong.}

82 In verbal or essential propositions classes are of different kinds, some natural and obvious, some from experimental observation, some more arbitrary. A man is a real thing or being. It is not merely that a class of two-legged mammals without reason is not reputed a man. I care not about the word; but here the word does not make the class, but the class the word: call it homo, or anthropos, or mensch, is all alike. Universal intelligence has distinguished that kind of being; the class existed, or the nature which constitutes it, before it got a name. I believe (and important principles are contained in that) God gave it as Adam did to the animals; but whether this were so or not, the thing was there before it got a name. It was not a horse nor an ox, nor a biped mammal with no more reason than these. A man was there to be called and have a name, and a distinguishing name, as horses, oxen, etc., were, and the difference known. In other cases the class was the result of experience, as weight, ductility, and other distinguishing qualities existed, and men made a class for convenience; but the qualities on which the class was founded were not words, but things. I am not now reasoning how or when the knowledge was acquired, whether by sensations produced or not. I accept that in general; but language is formed in the relative sphere of existence in which we are and in which we know, and the language is formed according to the system and accepts the things as real; and if men are to speak, for whom the sphere around them exists relatively, the language which expresses their thoughts must express the existence of things, which, relatively to them and their thoughts, do so exist. They may grow in this knowledge - form, where experiment has been their ground, more satisfactory classes; but, though in different ways, the difference which makes a class is not verbal but real, and the word is only the expression of it.

83 Hence saying a biped mammal without reason is not a man means merely not reputed a man, is false. He is not reputed 8 man because he is not one. Such a thing may exist, but it is not that thing to which the name has been given, and which is in fact a totally different thing from what the irrational biped is. You may call the irrational biped mammal man if you like, and the rational one fear or crut, if you like to be foolish, but the two things are as distinct as they were before. The fear is a fear, and the man is man. Mill's statement is childish trifling. Nor is it the whole of the attributes, which assumes all classes to have no existence but in words, as the nominalists, confounding different kinds of classes. If a man was born with one leg, or six fingers, he is a man still, though some of the regular physical attributes are wanting or excess. You will say this is only accidental difference. That is, you fall into the distinction of essential and accidental. Besides, attributes as a whole differ. There are black or Negro races, Turanian and Caucasian races. Supposing for a moment I say all descendants of Adam are Caucasian. But he Negro is not a Caucasian; therefore he is not a descendant of Adam. Suppose the Negro has the general physical constitution of man, the power of progress, the faculties, language, the consciousness of responsibility, conscience, reference to the idea of God, abiding relative affections of wife and children, has to say to God and men, as subject and fellows, an immortal soul, for we are only supposing, should I say he is not a man?

84 I do not believe a word of the theory of distinct races, and the want of truth in the idea makes the conclusion difficult to me; because known relationship to God is shut out by it, which I believe to be of the essence of man's nature; but if all this were true that God had created two races of men, "A man's a man for a' that." I utterly reject the idea, but the difference of black and white, prognathism, and even woolly hair, would not hinder his being a man if God had created him apart. It would set aside one great and important origin of a class, namely, common origin. The only question would be, Is that essential to being a man? I believe it is fully, but on Mr. Mill's ground it would not. They have not the same attributes, but in his sense they would be men, they have the attributes which constitute a man. His reasoning is false. I believe the theory to be wholly false, because it denies what is, as revealed, essential to man. Actually in relationship to God I do not believe such men could be; but if they were, they would be men, though the whole of their phenomenal attributes were not the same, and they had not the same ancestor. If you take in all men as one race, as I do, there may be several attributes different; but while their moral nature, and even physical, essentially is the same, they are men, Adam's children. If there be no essential attributes (that is, what makes man a man), and accidental ones, a yellow-haired German of olden time is not a man if I am.

This may seem long on such a point, but it is vital; because it makes phenomenal attributes everything, and the real classification of things - the fact that things are what they are besides mere phenomena - is wholly denied. Men may make classes for inconvenience, and give a name to represent each; but even here there is no real ground for a class but in actual things which distinguish some from others; and there are classes of being which God has made, and one wherein man stands alone, though in certain essential aspects, not connoting all that is in him, or in the name of the class, he may be classified in these aspects with others. As I may say, created intelligent beings are responsible. Angels are created intelligent beings, and so is man, or the like. To have classes true, we must have the qualities in common which they have by God's creation, or at least His providential ordering. I have nothing to do with any scholastic speculations on essences to explain essential differences.

85 I have already shewn that to say giving an attribute, as "rational," to man teaches nothing is a fallacy. It is the direct path to knowledge where the predicate involves a quality not affirmed in it about man. Man is a rational being. I only affirm about man that he is a rational being. And it unfolds, as to that, what man is, one particular quality: but supposing that quality involves in man or anywhere else consequences not pressed in it, as every rational being is responsible to God, this will be as true of an angel, say. It is not merely what is in man as an equivalent; it leads me by another larger proposition, applicable to man and other beings, and not known to be true of man till the knowledge of the second proposition acquired. It is not a phenomenal attribute of man like rationality. It is true of rationality wherever it is, from the relationship in which all rational beings stand. I am not speaking of man, but of rationality; but he, being so, comes under my new proposition as belonging to that class.

And this is a most important element of error in these logical and metaphysical systems, that they can only take up what is phenomenal, and all the greater and more important part of what man is and truth is - relationship - is left out. They can discuss his relationship with mere phenomena by sense or consciousness, but this last only mentally or in the reason, and that is all. All that is true and abides, naturally or spiritually, is outside this. Death, or the dissolution of things, closes phenomenal, and, as to mere mind, now possessed state. Hence it is said in Job as to wisdom, "Death and destruction have heard the fame thereof with their ears"; they know the end of what man has now; of what is beyond, of positive knowledge, of what abides, they can tell nothing. All logical knowledge is phenomenal with its consequences. The mind, as such, cannot see beyond the system with which it is in relation as such. Only it should not deny anything beyond it, but own its own limits which indeed it cannot help, only honestly.

But as Mill returns to his classes, I must add a few words to clear this point up. He is all wrong. Some predicates are class words formed by man, some a particular attribute. Thus, man is an animal: that is a class word, a class formed by man as to language, but from nature and by a difference existing in it. So really gold is a metal. This is a word formed to designate, by a collection of attributes, several objects which possess them, and are characterised by them, and distinguish them thus from others which do not. When I say man is mortal, it is one attribute, not a class in itself. I merely affirm one thing about man. Now, if I use a class word which only takes up one or some attributes to make a class, and leave others unnoticed, and if I affirm of the subject all that may be said of my class predicate absolutely, I may contradict something in the subject which does not come in question in the predicate. There may be some quality in the subject which does not hinder the class word being predicated of it, but may make untrue that which is true of others in the class. Thus all animals at some period cease to exist. This is phenomenally true. Man is an animal. Man ceases to exist. I conclude from what happens phenomenally to all animals, and even to man as such phenomenally, what may not be true of him for some other reason. If I assume, as I believe, he has an immortal soul, which does not come into the list of attributes included in the class word "animal," though phenomenally as an animal externally he does. And so Ecclesiastes takes him up. It is what is under the sun, the days of the life of his vanity. This comes from assuming phenomena to be all, which, with consciousness, is all man's reason can do. But he cannot say, man cannot have an immortal soul.

86 And the possibility proves the reasoning defective and false. And this is the whole question with metaphysicians and logicians; for experimental reasoning is their all, and it must be incompetent to pronounce beyond its own power, limited by the sphere to which it belongs, while it cannot say there is nothing beyond it, for it does not see beyond it. When I merely predicate one attribute, it is not quite so much so because I confine myself to the phenomenon predicated, as man is mortal. Only I may pursue it farther, and so run into it; but it is then not speaking from the known qualities of a class, but a positive new affirmation going beyond the predicated phenomenon. If I merely say "man is mortal," I merely affirm the phenomenon that we see men die as a rule, which is true, phenomenally true; though it be not beyond the reach of preventive power if God so will, but for man's sphere it is true. If I say all that is mortal ceases to exist, I go beyond the phenomenon and introduce a new proposition. It ascribes a new sense, or attribute, to mortal. Taken as a phenomenal class, animals do, and man too as animals in this world. It is as a class true; it is not true that the attribute mortality contains in it "ceases to exist." The statement goes beyond the phenomenon, for as to that they do cease to exist.

87 But a word more on classes. The notion that general terms or essences of classes are only the meaning of the name, that the whole of the attributes means the essence, and the taking all classes to be of the same nature, makes all the reasoning of Locke and Mill to be false. Some classes man has made for convenience of arrangement, some more from the nature of things, as a metal; but some general terms are not classes. Thus when I say "man," it is a being I know, not a class made by man from attributes or phenomena. I am conscious of a personal living existence. I know others through intercourse or through facts. They are a race, not a class. I know what a man is, for I am one, and find others of the same race, born as I am, and like me. I am not a dog, nor a horse, nor a pig, nor an ox, nor if there were Houyhnhnms who had reason would they be men. Man is a known race. Reason is essential to man. Yet if there be an idiot born of a human father and mother, he is a man, an exceptional idiotic man; whereas if there were a race physically just what men are without reason, I should not call them men; they are not of the same race.

Races are real things. Essential differences are negative. Not having them excludes from the class, as want of reason the supposed race; possession of them may make a class, but does not make a race, as the supposed Houyhnhnms. Hybrids, which some insist on, only prove this. They are called mules, distinguished from the races their progenitors belonged to. According to creation races may approximate in their extremes as to make it difficult to classify them; but this proves nothing, however interesting, as to God's way of acting. You may shew that the nucleus of a cell is the inorganic seat of life, and write a long book about protoplasm; but this does not prove a man is a pig, or a pig a man. I may have to learn the attributes of this race, or many of them, after I know it. The word "man" is not a collection of attributes, but a general term for that race; and I then learn what the attributes of that race are. He is a living being, with reason and power of abstraction, hence capable of progress. He has an immortal soul. But all this I learn about man after I know him de facto as a race. If true, they were always true of man, at least as now known to me, but they formed no part of my idea of man. I know the race, and then learn about the race. When the word speaks of a class distinguished experimentally, as metal, then, though often vague, still in principle it involves in it the whole of the attributes which constitute the force of the word. So of all races as well as men. What is a pig? It is an animal born of a boar and a sow. I learn that it is carnivorous and herbivorous, but I knew what a pig was before I knew that. Of course there may be varieties and species, and we may turn pig into a class name.

88 What Bain says, note to page 112, is utterly false, indeed absurd. Supposing there was a report that the dodo existed, and search is made say all over the world, Mauritius and all, and I say the dodo does not exist, in fact it really never had, what has that to do with its disappearing and becoming extinct? (My family had a large life-size good picture of a dodo, now in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford.) When I say dodo, I mean a supposed bird thus thought of, and I say it is a supposition, it does not exist. Such reasoning is child's play. I exist, and am conscious of it; what is that in contrast with? I admit relativity in phenomena, and insist on it. But that is not all. I could not use the word "is," or "exists," without its giving the idea of existence to my mind; and, if used with any word by itself, it affirms that idea of it - predicates the fact that there is really such a thing. I doubt its being a category. All the rest, at any rate, assume existence.

I have spoken of classes. White is not a class really, because it does not really give an attribute which adequately distinguishes other like things from one white set (unless I speak of colours, when it does). For class means attribute or attributes, by which certain things are distinguished from other like ones, and so clubbed together. Mill accepts most of what I have said, but by denying races makes all false. I have said that many classes are the act of men, but founded on natural qualities, as metal. That is, man invents a word to combine many distinct things in community of certain characteristic qualities which distinguish them; and the word is invented to give a common name to things which have the qualities, not to express the qualities themselves, so as that, if there were only one, it could be used. It is the result of the experimental knowledge of several having them. But if we call races classes, then it is not the act of man which has formed the class in any sense.

89 I do not think that class is a good word for this. If I say a man and a pig, it is no act of man's mind which makes any class. He calls an animal of that race a pig, and knows it is not a man. But there is no mental combination to form the class, if class it is to be called. A pig is a pig by creation, and now by birth. Nay, so far from it being the whole of the attributes that make a class or verbal general name equivalent to one where the whole of the attributes are included in the idea, there is no class at all; for if all the individuals have them, they are the same, there is no distinction. A class is only, when there are some qualities common to a certain number of objects otherwise distinct, that I classify them by a word expressing their possession of them in common, as metal, including gold, iron, copper, etc.; but if each individual object had all the qualities of gold there would be no class, all would be gold. Thus man is not a class, animal is, because there may be and are man and brutes connected in particular qualities. But he is wholly wrong in taking the general name as being the expression of qualities, so as to make it indifferent if one object or many, and a class or not, as being the meaning of the name and a class word, indifferently or not.

There are class words. Animal is, metal is, founded on qualities no doubt, but qualifying objects by their common possession of them. If I have only a word embracing all the qualities of a being, it is not and cannot be a class; if only some, it may. Thus, God is a general term, he says, to the Christian or polytheist. But the Christian or Jew, when he says God, takes in in principle all His attributes. He is one, almighty, eternal, omniscient; He is, and He only, absolutely. "God" takes in, at any rate, such attributes as absolutely preclude His being a class. There is no quality in common with the polytheist's God, for he has many of them, which exclude the qualities of the one. Even if I say mermaid or ghost, as in thought I take in all that they are, it cannot be a class, for all who are such are the same wholly; mermaid is mermaid. Where all the attributes are not taken in, it may become the name of a class, though where there is a race, and not man's combination, they will be only, as woolly-haired men, accidental differences. In fanciful names it is merely a question whether the fancy has formed a class or not. There may be many dragons having certain fanciful qualities in common, others not, and so be under a common name of class. Here, of course, all is man's creation, and he may invent as he likes. His statement that every name, the signification of which is constituted by attributes, is potentially name of an indefinite number of objects, need not be of any, may be of only one, is false. Suppose unity and omnipotence or even the last, be among the attributes, there can be only one. But if constituted by attributes, and I take in all, it is not a class; it may be a race. If only of one, it is no general term at all. We do not create a class by general names.

90 All this theory is wrong. If I say man, it is a general name; but if I take the whole of his attributes, it is a race of the same beings, not a class. Classes are made by men, by selecting qualities, and combining and distinguishing by them. In a word the whole of this is wrong, and wrong in the most important way. Races are popularly called classes, but then they do not rest on the meaning of words, nor are formed by men mentally (pages 132-139). Pages 139-141 are all obscurity and confusion. The question is not whether one or infinite qualities are in question. The essential difference is negative; it does not make the class, but the class is not the class without it. One quality, as white, or Christian, or mathematician, does not make a class (unless in respect of things constituted by colour or sciences or religions), because a man is just as much a man whether a Christian or a mathematician or not. These ideas do not enter into the conception of man; reason does. A being formed as man, as a general term (a race so qualified), without reason is not a man; but, if reason be in an angel or a dog, he is not therefore a man. A man represents a being not with the knowledge of all his attributes, but of such as constitute a man. (This is a question of the possession of language as expressing thoughts which normally is inseparable from human reason; that is, man is so constituted.) If one of these be not there, he is not a man.

Thus, if Negroes and Turanians were created apart, still if they had these qualities they would be phenomenally men; that is what man means. They might then be considered sub-classes, and man would be a class word, because there would be qualities in the Negro or Turanian inseparable from their being such not in the others which enter into the class. If I say pictures very white in their colouring are not pleasing - are too glaring; paintings are things formed by colours, hence one colour or another is part of their constituted existence, and so as to paintings they form species, though white or green be a single sensation. So in various earthly substances. Some have a set of qualities which make them metals; here, though natural differences, they are of sufficient importance to man by these qualities to make them a class; they melt, etc.; if they will not, they are not metals. Other things may melt, as sugar; that does not make it a metal, but what will not melt is not a metal. It may be one or many qualities which distinguish, but what makes a class is what distinguishes a certain number of objects from others similar in other respects, when the difference is such that where, if what makes it is absent, it would not be of those things to which the name is attached.

91 But when Mill says men have made classes, "a sense artificially given to the word for technical purposes," in the case of races, as man, ox, it is not so; it is merely observation of real differences. The word is expressive of the object as an object. When used as a class, it is not artificial but real, as observed. If a true class, the name is given because of real differences observed. That man gives a name to those that have is merely saying language belongs to him; but he cannot make a class without adequate distinctions belonging to beings of the same general sort, combining many of them together, part from others of the same sort. To lose this by scholastic mistakes of essences is only blinding oneself. Names for classes may be made by men; but if rightly made, the class is not made but discovered or known intuitively, which is only a way of discovering. I know a man is not an ox. Man and ox express this, they do not make the distinction. I may have then to ascertain by thought what makes the difference. They both live as animals live; have flesh, bones, blood, die as existence here (for that is all I can say phenomenally) - that is, in many very important things they have qualities in common.

What makes the difference? It is not artificially given for the purposes of science; the form is different, the race is different. In the genus animal I distinguish two classes; the name is quite immaterial Man has given that (the ox cannot) but I have to discover what is the real point, the quality or qualities without which a man is not a man normally, is not of that class in the genus animal. It is not a question of some or inexhaustible differences, but adequately distinctive qualities which combine a certain set of things contained in a larger class formed by having common properties. I have ascertained these distinctions combining many individuals of a larger division, without which they are not so combined or divided, as contrasted with a quality which leaves the differences which constitute the class where they were, so that, with or without it, the class subsists just the same, as red hair in a man. I thus possess the class. I may discover afterwards differences more or less important, which confirm the justice of the classification, or inform me as to the qualities; but if already adequate, I have my class. Thus language with man, cooking if you please, a sign it may be of the reflective use of materials as contrasted with instinct, but which is useless, as it may be merely the expression of reason, a thing by which reason may be discovered, however poor a one. It is quite immaterial what caused them to have the essential difference. I believe it was God; but for logic or man's mind it is merely phenomenal. And, save the notion of substantial essences, the Schoolmen were right, and Mill wrong. If the Schoolmen seized on what the name connoted, so as adequately to distinguish, by means of certain properties, those things which had them from those which had not, they did right. It is what makes a class, and that only, though others may be discovered.

92 Thus if I discover, by whatever means, that man has an immortal soul, I have a quality which, as well as reason, constitutes man what he is, as contrasted with other animals, and a more important difference; but, with reason, the class is right, because there is in man what there is in no other animal. And when I have arrived at what makes man to be man, all the rest which do not unmake his being man form no species. I have an infima species. Suppose there were men with reason, and not with immortal souls, I have two classes of men, if I still call them men; at any rate I have two kinds, which I can separate into classes. I do not believe this possible, because I have no idea of existence in moral things but as God made them; and thus the thought is necessarily inaccurate. But infima species is right - that is, a class adequately distinguished by qualities which make it what it is, which consequently cannot be subdivided, so that one division should not possess what makes them both the same thing essentially as man, though you may add qualities which leave it what it is, as woolly-haired, black-skinned, etc., Caucasian, Turanian; but all possess what makes them men. For the ethnologist they may conveniently be made species of. A man without a soul or reason is not a man as God made him. A red-haired or black-haired man is alike a man; but if the qualities which constitute the class remain, it is of that. That is the infima species. Whether classes be rightly formed is another question: but it is a question whether we have rightly followed facts; and here races come largely into question, because the distinguishing qualities follow them, and they are more readily perceived than others, and they are classes which God has made, and from which man with all his wisdom cannot get out. If God has approximated classes in given cases as He has, man may make hybrids, but he only proves his impotency by doing so. The distinction therefore between differentia and accidens is in the nature of things, and the foolish instance of cooking proves it. It is merely an expression of man's having reflective reason to use materials. It is not accidental, but what proves, however poorly, the essential difference. What he states as making the difference of genus and species is only true phenomenally or in the measure of man's mind as acting, not as acted on or even conscious.

93 In section 6, page 144, he merely puts forward what I have noticed in the case of colour, that if we take a word for a genus from any real fact, and use the species without adding any quality to make one, confining the difference to what is true only within the genus, then we may form classes, but we no quality. When I say man is a rational animal, I add a quality to animal. It is not merely what is not connoted in the word, but I falsify the use of the word itself as expressing the class if I add it, for thus an ox is not an animal, only man is. But when I say man is an animal, with four incisors, one canine - leaving out erect, for man only is, it is an added quality to animal - with four or two incisors, or no canines, an animal is as much an animal as before. It does not add any quality. These facts do not come into the circle of connotation of animal, and he is as much what is called animal as before, and only animal. When I say rational, it admits animality, but adds what is not in the notion of animality; when I say four incisors, he is no more than an animal, after all, nothing besides being an animal - nothing is added. I have already said the possession of an essential difference does not make a thing to be of the same class (strange to say, Mill takes the two examples I took), the want of it puts him out of it (save the question of normal state of a race); but if a dog had reason, it would not make him a man, but we should have two classes of rational animals.

94 But God has not formed things so. He has made classes; and so man must take them, for his reason is relative, and within the sphere so made, and we cannot really go beyond it. It may (for reasons beyond, sometimes perhaps within, our ken), be morally impossible. We do not know in everything, we may in some, how things are adapted in creation to one another. Comparative anatomy has shewn it within nature. Without it the reasons may be weightier and deeper. Thus os homini sublime dedit, not to go farther than outside, and feet and hands, instead of only hands or feet, may be so adapted to reason, or more, that we cannot suppose, say, that a dog should have reason, with any just thought at all. To meet their reasoning, I have sometimes supposed things which are not: but I deeply feel man as having reason is within the sphere where he is placed - the highest in it no doubt, but in it. I have no doubt there is a relation to God also, but his reason is phenomenal in its source: I deny that it knows God at all. We may prove there must be a cause; but, as said elsewhere, if we can, it proves we cannot know it.

But in this part (pp. 144-147) Mill is again all wrong in virtue of his principle, for Linnean or other classes do not add an idea to animal; they are as much a mere animal as before (very convenient for science no doubt, but that is all); not a species, though possibly necessarily as I have said, suited to it, because it adds nothing to the contents of the word animal - with four or all incisors he is an animal just the same. When I say rational, it adds an idea to animal which makes it really another thing from a mere animal. Man has not really two meanings, because it is not merely an artificial designation, but the name of a being we know, of which we give the true character by the difference or class term, as an animal by what is purely animal. Cooking is really a proprium, and proprium is merely what is caused by the essential difference.

95 Demonstration is not another kind, but merely proving it is so, caused by or necessarily connected with the essential quality, as, save organic defects, language belongs to reason (or rather to thought) in man. It may be convenient to distinguish, but it goes with what makes the species. Only some may be more obvious than others - some essential differences involve more consequences than others - but the propria are really more identified with ess. diff. than with accident. The accident we have practically spoken of; it is what leaves the individual or individuals in the universality of the class they belong to. It adds nothing to what the class name connotes; a yellow-haired race of men leaves what is meant by man where it was. A rational animal does not leave what is so, where animal puts him.

But if there be reality in classes (and there is when justly made), a definition by genus and specific difference gives more knowledge than the sum of all the attributes. In the first place, the latter is impossible and false, because there are many which contradict each other, and have nothing to do with the real explanation of the word, as woolly-haired, red-haired, prognathous, brachiocephalous, and dolichocephalous. I cannot introduce all these and their contraries as describing man. They do not make the difference of man and other things, but only of men amongst themselves. You cannot numerate all the attributes; and if you do, you have lost what makes him man. But this makes differentia and accidens clearly distinct in meaning: one a quality, without which a thing is not the thing named, a difference from other things: accidens, a difference in individuals, which still are the thing named. Proprium also is a constant difference caused by essential difference.

I do not dwell on giving a definition of one's own meaning of a word; it is arrogant. Words may be ambiguous, or their meaning changed by time, then of course we may explain; but it is at best the extreme of nominalism that there can be no definition of a thing. If so, there can be no mathematics, for though words must be used, they are part of human nature, and we are men; but be it circle, kreis, circolo, or what it may (and variety of language proves it), I am defining, if I can, a thing. And if the thing does not exist, you cannot it, as Mr. Mill's "round square." Some definitions are poor ones, as the shortest line between two points. That is a fact about a straight line. I say a line described by a point always moving to the same fixed point; a curve, one described by a point which never does, but always turns farther from it. This is by the bye.

96 (Page 152.) Provided the attributes are what make the difference of man (phenomenal man), and that involves adequacy and reality of difference from things not man. But if I use a class word embracing them, with the essential difference or differences, it is much more informing, because I connect it thereby with a large class in very important elements as such already formed in my mind, as a rational animal formed so and so, as given by Mill. You cannot define a simple sensation as white, because it is that, and that only - has no qualities but whiteness.

What he says of eloquence is all false; he defines it by its effects, which may fail by the state of those addressed, and yet the eloquence be sublime. It is perfectly intelligible to say, "all his eloquence, however elevated, produce no effect whatever: they were stern and unmoved." Eloquent is not the name of one attribute only. It is the power of presenting facts or thoughts in a way adapted to stir up the feelings or thoughts emotionally natural to man, or desired by the speaker or writer. A white object is quite another thing than white (page 155).

(Sec. 3, p. 155.) I do not admit what declares the whole of the facts to be the only adequate definition, but do not enlarge on it; because the difference is often more important, as rational animal denies rationality of other animals than man. This may be inadequate too if there is more than one essential difference, but generally or often these are only propria. But what I have already noted is all important, all this is only phenomenal. The Houyhnhnms, which I supposed before, not being realities, do not really come in question, because it cannot be said that it is possible. The form of man may be a necessary proprium. At any rate, classes are derived from observed facts, and cannot go beyond them. I deny that we can make classes which will be really such; and as Mill admits they are taken from nature, he must admit it. But of this I have spoken, only I should speak more strongly of it now.

It is true that this judgment of definition by genus and difference or differences only applies to the created world. Such only is phenomenal, so that we can in any ordinary way classify it (it is all that is subjected to our language) - at any rate classify adequately. When I come to Creator, it is evident that class can have no sense; but then I cannot define Him either. He cannot be measured by an inferior mind, and if it be not inferior, He is not really God; there is no God. And there is no summun genus at all really, for the highest carries me up to One who cannot be a genus, or He is not what He is. My summum genus must be a creature, not being, unless I deny creation and am an atheist, which, though he may strive to be, I do not believe man can be, though he may forget God for the creature, or corrupt the thought of God. Being is not exact, because though I may take it in a general way as a thing existing de facto, yet if I drop out creation, I falsify the idea of being when not being per se. Because, if I say I or a man exists, it is true; but I cannot say I, a man, without having the idea of having begun to be. And being, when applied to God, means one who did not begin to be, or some one was supremely before Him who caused Him to begin to be; and of one who never began to be I can form no idea, for I am finite; it is out of the sphere in which I exist, out of the power of mind. Human thought always and necessarily ascribes beginning as an idea. Negatively I can speak of it. I say infinite, etc., but I cannot conceive it positively in thought, because I am finite. I exist as to my status of thought in time. I may drop the idea of time, and only think of present being, I, and put together always and is. But when I think of that really, I must think of Creator and created. I can conceive what is always going on, because it is. But I cannot think of a living thing nor a formed thing (and man knows no other), without a beginning in its very nature. We talk of matter, but it is scholastic mysticism, of substance which gives no idea at all. We know nothing but what is formed, whatever formed it. There is no abstract idea of matter. For convenience we may make an abstraction. But there is no idea or conception, all our knowledge is phenomenal.

97 As to page 157, it is all well as phenomenal, but only in that way. And I suspect that all definitions are just solely in the relationship in which they are used, at any rate so far as forming classes. Thus a rational animal, or take all the essential attributes and enumerate them. It is what man is in this visible creation of which he forms a part, corporeally in distinctive form, as compared with other animals. It is man in this created sphere: all well in its way, in what is subject to mind. But if it be in relationship with God, that has nothing to do with it. I must take in an immortal soul, conscience, responsibility, subjection, lusts, passions, love morally to God and man, consequent guilt, and so on. Hence, as I have said, metaphysicians have no ground of morality or obligation of relationship. The very definition becomes different, though the other remains true in its own sphere, but convertible in the sphere it professes to define, only in the sphere and relationship in which it is spoken of; in another it has nothing to do with it, or is false. Mind deals with what is subject to it: subjecta veritas quasi materia; but this excludes God and all moral thought, all I am subject to or any action on me.

98 This confining of definition to particular relationships, a really material point, is proved by Cuvier's definition cited p. 158): Man is a mammiferous animal, having two hands. I have no objection to this. It refers to his classification as an animal. That is a particular relationship in which he stands, leaving out therefore, as to reason, what essentially distinguishes him from other animals. It is just in the relationship he is viewed in, but leaves out, and properly, what belongs to another aspect and relationship. So of the alleged adequate enumeration of attributes. It may be true and adequate in the relationship it refers to, totally false if another relationship be in question. If I say he is only that, it cannot be said. He is that in a given relationship, and that is all the justness and adequacy definition can be said to have. They belong to such a sphere, and are true in it. I admit man's knowledge is phenomenal, or some inference from it as existing in the sphere he does; but the question remains, Is there no other? Cuvier says what man is qua corporeal animality, metaphysicians what he is mentally; and we may add, in connection with the world subject to him, and that is all he can mentally, that is, by the power of intellect. But is that all the relationship he is in? I wholly deny it. It will be said, Prove there is another, or how can we know it? Not by intellect, as is evident, for professedly it is outside it. But intellect never loves: is that nothing in man? Love did not, it is true, exist in Greek.

But to go down - parent, child, husband, wife; I take natural relationships on purpose. Intellect cannot deal with them at all. Have not men hated Christ, the thought of Christ? What has intellect to do with that? Do not they dislike to think of God and responsibility? What has that to do with intellect? Intellect does not hate. Why is a child to obey its parents? - will intellect tell him?

99 While on the topic of definitions, I would notice as a signal instance (p. 153) of utter mental incapacity and incorrectness, I believe through moral blindness and absence of sense of responsibility falsifying every mental apprehension (for man is a moral being, and must think morally to think rightly) - at any rate, as an instance of incapacity to define - "Fault may be defined a quality productive of evil or inconvenience." Unless I introduce character - a fault in his character, which is loose and inaccurate and only fit to be used when it is failure in responsibility - it is his fault, otherwise defect is the word; but unless in this special way fault is not a quality at all. It is an actual failure. All the confusion in pages 160, 161, is from not seeing that his whole system of definition and classifying is false.

Man as such is popularly known, as Mill says. The enumeration of all the attributes never enters into men's minds, nor even a definition, till men begin to think and analyse their thoughts. Thus adequate definition is one thing, complete knowledge another; definition seizes such attributes as suffice to determine and define it in the midst of and from other subjects, as a rational animal of such a form. The thing is known in itself. I can see and hear a man. This defines it in the midst of others only in the relationship in which it is defined. The full knowledge of what man is must tell me all his attributes, and, if really full, in all his necessary relationships, that is, the relationships in which he exists as man.

As to scientific definitions, they are not arbitrary, but pass from the obvious qualities to more exact distribution by the progress of knowledge, and though drawn from nature, are, as a class, made for convenience. Thus acid meant sour, and does, but a man must be a chemist to know what the word has come to mean in chemistry. But, in what is ordinary phenomenal, not scientific, discovery, thought and language cannot be separated; we think in language, and a great deal of the dissertation on "verbal and real" consequently is beating the Horse is a mere word, but I think of a thing if I say air. A horse leaps; it is not a word leaps. No doubt forms of propositions are the same, as I may say a centaur leaps; but if I do say it, I am thinking of a thing real or fictitious, half man and half horse, believed true experimentally, I suppose, from the Thessalians being horsemen; so that Mill is all wrong here. When you come to facts, you can only take in centaur that which is thought, what attaches to the word; in triangle too; only centaur, being taken from imagination, cannot go beyond it, whereas triangle being taken from a mathematical shape, I can pass from the thought thing to the examination of the actual thing. What is implied has nothing to do with the matter, it is what is expressed is in question in any proposition.

100 Again (p. 165) we arrive at no truth by reasoning, but only at conclusions; if the premises are just, then the conclusion is necessary. The name denotes the thing, and in reasoning by means of the name, I reason about the thing, man being so constituted as to think of things by words. He cannot invent a thought; I believe he may put them together, as a centaur or a griffin, but he thinks a thing in doing so. He seems to me always to forget that human knowledge and definition is drawn from phenomena. Thus a circle is not learned by "may exist," but from what I observe and know, even if not physically described, but thought of according to certain known qualities. The whole of the statement in pages 165-7 is absurd.

"Through the point B draw a line returning into itself, on which every point shall be at an equal distance from the point A," is a definition of what you are doing, as circle is a word for what you have done. A circle is a figure every point of whose boundary-line is at an equal distance from a given point (A) within it. You may call it 'bosh' if you like, but such a figure Englishmen are accustomed to call circle; and the thing is what I think of when I say a circle, and so does Mr. Mill, for without ceremony he says, the circle being now described. Hence B C D being a circle, that is, such a figure agreed to be called circle, two certain lines are by supposition equal. All that is a settled fact, when I have got my circle and my radii; but by drawing the secant of the arc within the two radii I have an isosceles triangle, and can go on farther in my mathematics. I do not reason about the word circle, but about a thing to which having certain qualities that name in English is given. When he says B A is equal to C A, not because B C D is a circle, but because B C D is a figure with the radii equal, it is about as much sense that man is not a quadruped, not because he is a biped, but because he has two legs or feet. All I see nearly "self-evident" is that he is talking arrant nonsense.

101 The question of dragons or serpents is decided by the very important principle that the conclusion of a syllogism never states a truth, but a conclusion; that if the premises are true, the conclusion follows. It is a mere consequence of the premises. It does follow justly that there are such serpents, if dragons are such things, etc. The question of truth lies in the premises. A dragon is not a dragon means; this is another statement. Hence the conclusion always is "therefore." The whole of this, too, is nonsense.

A definition does in one sense refer to the meaning of words; but the word represents a reality, and, as we think in language, the word represents the thing thought of as the basis of further reasoning, the attributes of the thing represented by the word being taken, as far as known, for granted. Thus, if I say there can be no quadrature of the circle, it is not of the word circle there can be no quadrature, but of the figure represented in my mind by that word. All this is folly; so of page 168. Suppose I say the figure called circle is a figure having a boundary-line of which every point is equidistant from one given point in it; or a circle is a figure which, etc.; one is a definition as much as another. Adding "idea of" merely puts it in the mind, and defines it there as such. It is just as much a definition of that idea, only dragon having no reality, it makes it untrue de facto; but the two are definitions one as much as another. A dragon being a thing, etc., the idea of the dragon is the idea of the thing, etc.; one is exactly as much definition as the other, one taking it as an assumed fact, really an idea, the other as an idea. It is true that a circle has such an attribute, also true that what has not is not a circle. What man can make is not the question. A straight line is as clear an idea as possible, and justly reasoned about as such; very likely a man could not make one. Points and lines are all ideal; but the great point here is that there is no demonstrative truth, but merely demonstrative conclusions, truth being assumed. The therefore is a plain proof of it.

The absence of all moral feeling and basis for it in the author's mind is shewn in the remarks on "just," as well as the loose character of his thinking. "Just" is what is due to a person in the relation in which we stand towards him. The want of reality, and all being words in his mind, makes even his logic poor. I add a syllogism is really this, If so-and-so is such, and if such be so-and-so, then, etc. There is such a total absence of the power of abstraction and analysis in the book, that it is wearisome to deal with its statements. He has no idea of just, or noble, or mean, but by a comparison of objects so called to find a common principle. The moral instinct of man seizes the force of words so employed without always asking why it so estimates them; but the moral nature estimates morally. Of this, of course, he has no idea. It may be a useful exercise of mind to analyse its thought, but that is all; the apprehension is there without it. Moral sense, though not of course infallible, determines it.

102 A few words as to mathematical terms. All here, too, is superficial. He never can distinguish between objects with qualities and the quality itself. Of length he says, that is, of long objects; but the two things are quite different. In common use we are occupied with objects, but we are here defining. Now we exist in space as in time; it is our mode of existence, and both are measured and partitive. A point is nothing; it is where a thing begins, or, more strictly, a division of space or time begins; it is where a given thing begins, and its absence ceases by the existence of the thing; it is that in which the division of space begins, or of anything existing in space. Length is the distance, when the same direction is followed from a given point to a given point, the part of space in distance between the beginning and end. It is not the thing, but the part of space in which, from the first point of the thing to the last point, the thing exists. Now, we do think of things in space and of space as occupied by them, the object being wholly immaterial; divisible space is our necessary way of thinking: so far from not thinking it we cannot think otherwise. Length is the quantity of space in one direction; breadth is exactly the same thing, only for convenience, as occupied with objects, we take the same thought of one object in another direction, strictly at right angles perhaps; but the direction only is different, not the idea. A point is merely where the distance in space or division of space begins, and can have no existence consequently in it; a line is merely a metaphorical use of a physical thing used to measure distance; length is merely the direct distance between the two points where the division of space contemplated begins and ends. If I postulate, I must think of an object, but space is not an object: it is the manner of existence of objects for us, or of our finite mode of thinking. Everybody knows what space means. No one can define it, because it is the mode of existence and thought for us, in which exists everything we can think of, in the sphere we exist in as thinkers.

103 Nor is the inquiry what is just or virtuous, justice and virtue, the definition of a name merely; because if I define the word, it is by stating what the thing is (if it denote really anything) which the name speaks of. If I say virtue is the moral energy which does what is right and just in spite of the difficulties or temptations which stand in our way, and there be such qualities or character, I state the real qualities or character of which the word stands as the sign in the remarkable instrument of thought and communication bestowed on man, called language. An infidel may think there is no such thing really as virtue, but there is; and when, if needed, I explain the word, I explain or define it by what the thing is. I can hardly conceive a lower moral state, without question of religion, than that of which this part of Mill gives evidence.

A circle seems to me a line described by a point moving round another given fixed one, always at exactly the same distance; it then necessarily, if carried all the way round, enters into and ends at the point started from. There is no postulate to describe it. "Always at the same," or "not always at the same," is as easy one as another; and to say it postulates something is to say that we must postulate describing any figure at all, to deny which is to deny the existence of mathematics. Circle is merely a word which, for the convenience of language, represents such a figure. Take a fixed pivot and move a steel line attached to it round, and you have It as to the means of objective thought; and, so far from it being a postulate that such a line or a circle can be drawn or may exist, I do not believe it can be drawn, and so Mr. Mill states. Whether it may exist I know nothing of; but in both cases I know what I want to draw, and do it as nearly as I can, assuming its perfection, which is in its definition and nowhere else, and from that I reason.

Though, of course, there are equivalent propositions which prove nothing, many are not so. And I reject, as I have done, the sum of attributes being a definition. Objects are really known, as a man, and then defined by what distinguishes them to the mind, and the words stand for the object known, and the distinctive quality may be discovered to involve truths not present to the mind in the object, and so further knowledge be acquired. I reject also, if it is what follows, its being a truth, as he says (page 180). It is not a truth as so following but a proved consequence - if the premises are true, and no more. Logic has nothing to do with truth. Truth rests on testimony.

104 As an instance of the looseness and inaccuracy of Mill's mind, I notice (p. 181) "incapable of reason," which is nonsense - of reasoning perhaps. Nor do I accept his list of predicables. The making the definition of a word the sum of its attributes falsifies the effect of the syllogism, as does his inaccuracy. I have already stated that what makes a being a man to me is not the sum of his attributes. I am ignorant of the half of them; but he is a man to me, and to a savage, and rightly so (yea, even to an animal). Hence if the minor applies a quality from the admitted predicate of the major, not in my idea of man, I increase my knowledge. Supposing I know nothing of life being in the blood, and it is discovered as to animals, and I admit man is an animal, I have to conclude he so dies. I have already said truth and belief are only in the premises. Of course all that is true was always true in the system I am of; but my growth in knowledge is by discovery, and I may by general terms of acquired knowledge learn particular things by just conclusions as to what is included in the general term.

But, further, death is not mortality. There is an inference that because so many have died, all do; but this has nothing to do with the syllogism, save as the believed premise. The kind of syllogism is not a fair test, because the subject of the minor is only an individual of that of the major; whereas, as said above, a class word justly predicated may contain or involve an attribute not included in the mental idea of the subject of the major; whereas, by the rule de omni et nullo, in the instance given, it is on the face of it not true when it is an individual of the class. But no observation has made me know even here that the Duke of Wellington dies. It is a direct and mere inference from the premises that all men do, however I had learned that. Unless I had heard of God's sentence I could not have told it, that I know of, for Adam's lifetime. It might have been a puzzle for centuries. The syllogism never proves the fact, but the consequence. All men are mortal is not the cause that the Duke of Wellington dies. It assumes it, if he be a man; but it proves it to me because I cannot deny either of the premises. Logic has nothing to do with facts, but with mental consequences. It is this (as often said) that makes all Mill's reasoning false. It proves he must die, not a fact but a consequence. For here the fact is not so. The Duke of Wellington is not dead; but, as men are mortal, and he a man, he must die - at least is mortal. Testimony is the only proof of truth or fact, save personal experience. Nor was mortality known because death was, identified here with Mill's usual inaccuracy.

105 But the whole idea of Mill as to syllogistic reasoning is wrong. It is only reasoning, and this to prove the justness of a conclusion, not heretofore admitted, from what I do admit; and he admits "it is indispensable to throw our reasoning into this form when there is any doubt of its validity." This is all it is meant for. It may thus convince of facts as to a given subject which form no part of my idea of the subject, which having been otherwise discovered and admitted are predicated in the major, and then, the subject of the major being in the class predicated, this asserted in the minor brings the subject of the major into the condition so asserted. But, as I have already stated, the only thing believed is what is in the two premises (which of course may be contested but is assumed by the syllogism); but if the form be right, no doubt remains as to conclusion so far as phenomena go. A syllogism is only, "If so and so, then "; and this it does perfectly in the sphere of man's knowledge, what is subject to sense and experience; but the statement that the inference is in the premises, as I have said, has nothing to do with the matter. They are assumed truths, and the syllogism has nothing to do with how acquired; they may be by observation, or consciousness; they may be, if I believe it, by revelation, or by any other way. The syllogism assuming their truth says that excessive brightness dazzles the eye; I say to one who has never seen snow, But snow in sunshine is excessively bright (which he believes on my testimony); therefore, snow in sunshine dazzles the eye. The syllogistic conclusion is just, there is no difference at all in the premises. He knows by experience what dazzling the eye means, by testimony what snow is. The conclusion is certain - he knows what snow does, which he did not know before.

106 But all Mill's ground is false. In reasoning from particulars to particulars, the fact may be true, but it is false reasoning, and not what thoughtful men do. His instance only shews his inaccuracy. "A burnt child dreads the fire," is not reasoning, it is instinctive fear; and if a thing looks like fire, it is equally afraid of it - an instinct mercifully put in animal life even, but not reasoning; its reasoning value is found in another proverb, "The scalded dog fears cold water." The man must have had an extraordinary opinion of himself, with such a mind, to undertake to write on logic, pace Sir J. Herschel, Archbishop Whately, and Mr. Bailey. But it is also all false that, if John and Thomas die, etc., the Duke of Wellington will die. I suppose before Adam died, Enoch went up to heaven; should I rightly say Adam will? If ten had done so, not more truly. When Cain killed Abel, I had seen death. Man was capable then of being put to death. But would he die if let alone? I had seen him live 600 or 700 years, and nobody died; then I should have concluded he could not, he was not in se mortal. But when I have seen or known everybody die for thousands of years, I conclude that man (this being, this race) is mortal - that is, dies as left to the natural phenomenonal course of his race. It is not that particular men have died. Man is mortal, or even all men are mortal, is quite a different proposition. There has been an induction as to the nature of the race, Enoch and Elijah being excepted, as happening by the intervention of extrinsic power. Consequently I say the Duke of Wellington certainly (if no such power intervenes) will die, for he is a man, and such is the fate of his race. I can say, as a conclusion phenomenally considered, the Duke of Wellington must die, etc. It is a perfectly correct conclusion, supposing I believe in revelation, and, spite of all the Mills and Voltaires, there are those who, by grace at least, have sense enough to do it; but this is not my question. Supposing I believe that the sentence of death lies on man, I say man is mortal (save by intervention of extrinsic power). Some may suppose that great men or wise men do not, are taken to heaven like Hasisadra, or deified like Hercules or Nimrod; I say, No, he is a man, and he is mortal. The conclusion is as perfect and as certain. And that is what the syllogism is and does; it draws a conclusion from assumed truths. How they are discovered has nothing to do with the syllogism, which is just as sound a conclusion if the premises were false as if they were true. The premises being true has nothing to do with the justness of the conclusion, nor has the way the truth of them has been discovered. It is not necessarily by inference at all. The discovery, be it of Sir W. Hamilton, Mill, or Berkeley, is a mare's nest (pages 209-240). The form merely assures accuracy in drawing the conclusion.

107 I repeat here (p. 232), saying that man is mortal is not the same as that A B C, etc., died. The difference is as real as it is grave. It may be, if universal, a just induction; but dying as a fact, and subjection to death, are distinct things. I might have seen the whole world destroyed by the flood, and not justly conclude that men must die of themselves naturally, as we say, and therefore I could not have said the Duke of Wellington will or must die. Put the syllogism and try. So many millions of men died, perished in the flood, therefore the Duke of Wellington will die (without it). Is there any just conclusion there? As to conclusions to particulars and general formula being the same, it is the same; it is every way false; the induction in either case is false as reasoning. It may contain motives in the structure of the particular case involving the result; but then it is a general formula, in its nature applying to that structure, and the proposition is only true because it is general - that is, true in the nature of the thing, so that it is false from particular to particular, and always is so as reasoning. But Mill is all wrong (as is Whately) when he says that the major is an affirmation of the sufficiency of the evidence on which the conclusion rests. It states the proposition, but says nothing of the evidence one way or another, nor of the induction on which it is founded, nor is it necessarily founded on an induction. It is the basis of assumed fact on which the syllogistic reasoning is founded. In the common disputations they denied the major or the minor as facts (or distinguished), or the conclusion, which last alone referred to the syllogistic process.

(Page 235). All his reasoning here shews nothing but the grossest mental incapacity. No one doubts we infer from particulars very often, as that Tenterden steeple was the cause of Goodwin Sands; but it is never sound as reasoning, save as above when it involves a general proposition which sagacity often instinctively sees. So that Mill is wholly wrong, does not see how it becomes a general proposition, which alone makes the conclusion just. Some men die, therefore others do, is never just as reasoning; all men do, therefore such and such will, is; though I may call in question the truth of the general proposition. And though all men include the one, the reasoning is just because it does. The question is, if Thomas will die? I say all men do, and he is one of the all, therefore he will - not that he dies because of it, but that I know he will because he is. He dies because he is mortal. The conclusion is not generally necessarily, but to the truth as to some from what is true as to all; and the conclusion as to some from other some is no just conclusion at all - never is. Why should I die because Socrates does? But if I have justly arrived at the subjection to death of all, with which induction the syllogism has nothing to do but assumes it, it is true of Socrates or any one else. That is, the general proposition is essential to the conclusion; if not, the dying of all other men would prove nothing as to all. Man is mortal, such as he is; it is his nature. Man is mortal, that is, the general proposition, which is everything; the "conditions of legitimate induction" (p. 236) cannot be realised as to the Duke of Wellington at all without the general proposition, however arrived at. Mill does not even see what he is reasoning about. I admit that "the general conclusion is never legitimate unless the particular one would be so too," that is, as to the fact; if it were not, the general one would not be true. But that is arguing from the general to the particular; which is exactly the conclusion of the syllogism, by means of a middle term.

108 The question is, Can we arrive at the conclusion as to the particular one without the general one being true first? That is, can we justly say A B C died, therefore the Duke of Wellington is mortal? That is "Mill's logic." His statement is quite true, being the principle of syllogism, and refutes, if it were needed, his whole system. That we take the trouble of stating the general proposition has nothing to do with the matter; but it is an indispensable condition of the validity of the inference. Thus if I say A B will die, for he is a man, this truth assumes that all men do. For clear inference the latter is stated as the major premise. If all men do not die, I cannot say the Duke of Wellington will; he may be of those who do not.

I have, singularly enough, anticipated in my notes nearly every question Mill has raised. Here (p. 224) he confutes himself completely. "There is no contradiction in supposing that all these persons have died, and that the Duke of Wellington may notwithstanding live for ever." Just so; that is, you cannot argue syllogistically or really from particulars to particulars, which is what he says you can. If 999 millions and 900 thousand had died, and 100 thousand not, there is no proof at all that A B will die; it may be 9999 to one he will, but there is no proof of anything. You must have a general proposition for proof. The way, as I have said, I acquire the general proposition has nothing at all to do with the proof in the syllogism which assumes and starts from the general one (liable, of course, to be contested by the adverse disputant). If I had lived in Adam's time, and no one had shewn mortality (not death merely), and I believed scripture, I should have said all men are mortal. Adam and all his children will die, for they are men (save prevention by power). If observation was my ground, I could not say any one would die. The general proposition may be rightly or wrongly accepted, but that is another question. But, as he says, there would be a contradiction if the general principle be assumed, not if only particular cases; that is, a syllogism is sound reasoning because it lays the basis in a general proposition; and Mill talks nonsense in his reasoning about it. But I repeat, with the reasoning of the syllogism the actual truth of the premises has nothing to do. It is a contradiction not to admit the conclusion, assuming the premises. That the premises may be obvious or require proof is evident, and may be partially true, as I have said as to animals. Animals cease to exist; man is an animal; therefore man ceases to exist. As existing here in time, qua animal he does; but it is only partially true, because animal and man are not equivalent terms - man is more comprehensive.

109 Water dissolves lime; if I put this lime into this water, it will dissolve it. But the water is already saturated. We have thus to distinguish the accuracy of propositions. Water will dissolve some lime is alone true; and this water is water with its full complement of lime. What a weariness to turn to this from the truth, from the word of God! But I pursue, the rather as here (pp. 240-247) the cloven foot comes out, though it is really only going over again the same false ground; and Mill clearly proves, in seeking to do the contrary, that general propositions are the only way of real conclusions. Thus as to arsenic (page 242). I have no need to go to other inductions from qualities. What produces a black spot under such circumstances, etc., poisons. No matter whether metallic, volatile, or what else, if everything that does so poisons. The induction is as to the nature of the thing which does produce blackness, that is, to a general proposition: All that does so poisons. Supposing all that does so does not poison, I can draw no conclusion from such a spot. That is, a general proposition which states the nature of what does is absolutely necessary to the argument. If only some articles, alike in this, do, I may add, A spot-producing article if also metallic, volatile, etc., does these qualities are necessary to make it universal, that is, determine its nature as poisonous; but I have my general proposition. Everything that produces such spot, being also metallic, volatile, etc., poisons, has that nature destructive of physical life in man. I learn it in every known instance, and when I have (any exception being from an extraneous cause), I say "every," I have a general proposition as to its nature, and hence only applied to every case because it is its nature, and so always such. The justness of the induction has of course to be settled. That is, my major premise may be contested, but with the conclusion this has nothing to do - that is based on its being true, and, if true, the conclusion is simply certain.

110 And this he admits in the government case. No government: that general proposition is the foundation of all - "a generalisation from history." The similarity is not the question - another false principle of his. It is in this the same, it desires the good of its subjects: the nature and principle which governs the point is ascertained. This government acts in the same way. It certainly is not likely to be overthrown (for likeliness is the point to be proved here). Then comes question as to the fact. Now this is not a question of inference at all, but of testimony. Is it a fact that I believe the testimony, or not? If I do, I say with certainty. Supposing twenty instances of disinterested intelligent witnesses had occurred. This may or may not be true, and may or may not be believed to be true. To draw my conclusion, the government must be the same in this; if I believe the testimony, I say it is the same, as no government, etc.; this is not likely to be overthrown. This is an inference justly drawn, and the inference certain according to the premises, but "may be believed to be true" gives no inference as to fact at all as to this government. The witness of intelligent disinterested witnesses affords no ground of inference. It may be all necessary and right for common human life, but has nothing to do with logical inference. I may be a bad judge of the witnesses, or ill informed as to them, and other witnesses being true does not prove them to be so. Moral probabilities are very important, but they have nothing to do with logical inference. I can say, if these say true, this government is not likely, a certain inference on a hypothetical truth, and so far logical; but what depends on the moral estimate of my mind as to the personal qualities of witnesses has nothing to do with logical inference. It only proves incapacity to judge of reasoning to say it does. The resembling other cases is no part of what I believe on testimony at all even, but the fact of that in which they are the same. Nor is it reasoning from particulars. His starting-point was no government, and supposing this true only of some, the possibility of overthrow even, if so, not its unlikeliness, would be proved. The whole argument is trash, save as it clearly proves he is all wrong. Being asserted to do so by intelligent, etc., was no mark that it did so in its nature or qualities, but merely a question, Do these de facto speak truth as to its qualities? of which their testimony is no mark at all as an attribute in the government. But all this is to get rid of evidence, and subject the matter to logical inference that nothing might be believed, and always rest in this "may be believed to be true," and nothing be believed at all. Now, reasoning or syllogistic conclusion is certain if the premises be true, and evidence may be morally or absolutely certain too. This makes all uncertain in logic and in testimony. I do not a moment admit that every step in the deduction is still an induction. The deduction does not begin till the general proposition or nature of the subject expressed in the predicate is, through induction or other means, assumed to be true. In the deduction there is no induction at all.

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