Epistemology_Complete_153.topic_32.txt

we learn the use of general propositions; and a person of untutored sagacity will skilfully apply his acquired experience to adjacent cases, though he would bungle grievously in fixing the limits of the appropriate general theorem. But though he may conclude rightly, he never, properly speaking, knows whether he has done so or not; he has not tested his reasoning. Now, this is precisely what forms of reasoning do for us. We do not need them to enable us to reason, but to enable us to know whether we reason correctly. In still further answer to the objection, it may be added that even when the test has been applied, and the sufficiency of the evidence recognized if it is sufficient to support the general proposition, it is sufficient also to support an inference from particulars to particulars without passing through the general proposition. The inquirer who has logically satisfied himself that the conditions of legitimate induction were realized in the cases A, B, C, would be as much justified in concluding directly to the Duke of Wellington as in concluding to all men. The general conclusion is never legitimate, unless the particular one would be so too; and in no sense, intelligible to me, can the particular conclusion be said to be drawn from the general one. Whenever there is ground for drawing any conclusion at all from particular instances, there is ground for a general conclusion; but that this general conclusion should be actually drawn, however useful, can not be an indispensable condition of the validity of the inference in the particular case. A man gives away sixpence by the same power by which he disposes of his whole fortune; but it is not necessary to the legality of the smaller act, that he should make a formal assertion of his right to the greater one. Some additional remarks, in reply to minor objections, are appended. The preceding considerations enable us to understand the true nature of what is termed, by recent writers, Formal Logic, and the relation between it and Logic in the widest sense. Logic, as I conceive it, is the entire theory of the ascertainment of reasoned or inferred truth. Formal Logic, therefore, which Sir William Hamilton from his own point of view, and Archbishop Whately from his, have represented as the whole of Logic properly so called, is really a very subordinate part of it, not being directly concerned with the process of Reasoning or Inference in the sense in which that process is a part of the Investigation of Truth. What, then, is Formal Logic? The name seems to be properly applied to all that portion of doctrine which relates