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and automatism) of which the act of volition is only the executor. Every act of volition is preceded by
a teleological syllogism which concludes in favor of a necessity for action. Now, does not a
syllogism or some such analysis always imply an invention, and does not an invention imply a
syllogism whether implicit or clearly formulated? From two premises—two affirmative or negative
propositions—I deduce a third proposition which expresses a new necessity for affirmation, the
logical, scholastic, ordinary syllogism. From those two premises, of which one expresses a volition
or a goal, and the other a means to this goal, I deduce a necessity for action which consists of putting
this means into action: and this is the syllogism of finality.
I know that traditionally the syllogism is not considered a process of discovery but only a method
of verification, whereas the famous canons of induction are supposedly the only true paths to
invention. But precisely the opposite seems true to me. 3 Before any experimental research there must
be a hypothesis based on an association of judgments from which a hypothetical conclusion has been
deduced as a simple, more or less probable possibility. Empirical methods are then useful in order
either to raise the conjecture up the scale of probability to certainty or to strip it of all semblance of
truth. Empirical methods serve to verify the conjecture. By constructing a syllogism (and usually
without realizing it), a Pasteur, a Helmholtz, a Lavoisier, who begins by “suspecting” the existence of
oxygen before demonstrating it experimentally, is doing an inventive thing. Through experimentation
they establish facts which prove the real or imaginary character of the invented hypothesis.
II
The essential deductive character of invention explains the sequence of theorems or laws
successively formulated by a science, and the successive technical developments of an industry. But
however deduced, these innovations were nonetheless unexpected and unforeseen and occurred
partially by chance. When one looks back over the types of locomotion from the litter to the most
recent locomotives, or when one sees in a museum the paleontological series of vertebrates from the
first rudiments of walking, swimming, or flight to their higher order perfection, one is struck by a
double impression of logic and peculiarity; here is the mystery of living individuality—always
original, though always inferred from its two parent premises.
Even in the arguments of an irreproachable logician, each new argument appears as a felicitous, but
surprising, discovery. This surprise is due to the spontaneous placing of one memory on another so
that even an argument which stays centered on its basic theme never develops in a straight line but
follows a picturesque trail. Very rarely, however, is there only a single logic operating in a mind and
even more rarely in a society, which is essentially a collective and enormously inclusive mind. These
most diverse and mutually contradictory deductions advance by zigzags, crossing each other,
swerving, mingling sometimes, then separating once again. Hypnotists have noted that between deep
hypnosis and total awakening some of their subjects go through a somnambulist awakening 4 during
which they remain open to suggestion and indiscriminately subscribe to contradictory suggestions
superimposed on and accumulated in their minds. The same may well hold true for the reason and
freedom of people plunged into an intense social environment in which they strongly and unwittingly
influence one another, like the hypnotized subjects mentioned above. Even in the thirteenth century,
when Catholicism had attained its relative perfection and purity, it is surprising to note the number of
not just non-Christian but antichristian elements in the customs, laws and institutions. The facility with
which an unorthodox idea slipped into those minds is quite remarkable. Emperor Frederick II, who
was after all the right arm of the Church, was host to both bishops and emirs (and at the same time),