An introductory text-book of logic - Mellone, Sydney - Rare Books at ...

2l6 CONDITIONAL ARGUMENTS AND
"formulating" of an argument
as not the essence of
Logic, but as a process preliminary to the logical esti
mation of it, as the spreading out and dissecting of
our specimen in order to examine it carefully and see
the hidden mechanism, then all these alleged special
kinds of inference, parallel to the
"
"
syllogism in the
narrower sense of "class-reasoning," are syllogisms in
the Aristotelian sense, which we have adopted. Thus,
in example (a), above, the real syllogism
What is equal to B is equal to that to which B is
equal (viz., C) ;
A is equal to B ;
. . A is equal to C.
Here the major premise is the general principle on which
is :
the validity of the argument entirely depends.
8. The question has been raised, of whether there
is any real inference in the syllogism, whether the con
clusion gives us any new truth ?
We must reply that the conclusion of an inference
can never be entirely "new," i.e., absolutely uncon
nected with the premises ; for if so, it could not follow
from these premises. In the case of the syllogism,
the conclusion is contained in the premises taken
together ; the conclusion would offend against the
rules of the syllogism if it told us anything not con
tained in the premises. The real act of inference
consists in the synthesis (avvOea-is, putting together)
of the premises. When we have got the premises
together we have got the conclusion, save for the
formal process of expressing it.
But it has been argued that the conclusion is already
contained in the major premise, and that therefore the
syllogism, if taken as an argument to prove the con-