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This is new knowledge, not contained in our premisses, because the general proposition, 'two and two are four', never told us there were such people as Brown and Jones and Robinson and Smith, and the particular premisses do not tell us that there were four of them, whereas the particular proposition deduced does tell us both these things.
5 The appointing of the ships for Admiral and Viceadmiral, and those men to consult and agree vpon the courses and directions of the voyage, as aforesaid, hath bene done by the consents and with the liking of you all, and therefore doubt not but that you will all carefully and willingly obserue the premisses.
On the other hand, if the 'necessity' of the operation be taken seriously, the 'inference' becomes illusory; for if the conclusion inferred is already contained in the premisses, what sense is there in the purely verbal process of drawing it out? A Formal or verbal syllogism depends essentially on the ability of its Middle Term to connect the terms in its conclusion.
Times had changed; it behoved him to change the methods which hitherto had held together his hapless inheritance. Now Abdul Hamid was not in any sense a wise man, and the ability which has been attributed to him, in view of the manner in which he successfully defied the civilisations of Europe, is based on premisses altogether false.
In derivative knowledge our ultimate premisses must have some degree of self-evidence, and so must their connexion with the conclusions deduced from them. Take for example a piece of reasoning in geometry.
In other words, every conclusion which can be proved in any of the last three figures, may be proved in the first figure from the same premisses, with a slight alteration in the mere manner of expressing them. Every valid ratiocination, therefore, may be stated in the first figure, that is, in one of the following forms:—
There no friend of India dare wish her success, to be a possible prey to Russia or Germany, or even to Japan. But reasoning to the logical issue, we get light upon our premisses. India for what Indians?, we ask ourselves. For Hindus or Mahomedans; for the million, English-speaking, or the many-millioned masses?
We have already observed that the syllogism, in the ordinary course of our reasoning, is only the latter half of the process of travelling from premisses to a conclusion. There are, however, some peculiar cases in which it is the whole process.
From the cognition of self to the cognition of the world, and through these to the supreme being, the progression is so natural, that it seems to resemble the logical march of reason from the premisses to the conclusion.* Now whether there lies unobserved at the foundation of these ideas an analogy of the same kind as exists between the logical and transcendental procedure of reason, is another of those questions, the answer to which we must not expect till we arrive at a more advanced stage in our inquiries.
And since the axiom can only be violated by assenting to premisses and rejecting a legitimate conclusion from them, nothing is necessary, except the connexion between a conclusion and premisses; of which doctrine, the whole of this and the preceding chapter are submitted as the proof. We have now proceeded as far in the theory of Deduction as we can advance in the present stage of our inquiry.
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