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Updated: June 21, 2025
This very assumption, this major premiss, which has been so long conceded to him, has been taken out of his hands, and demolished. Hence, we do not oppose the shield of faith to his argument; we hold it in triumph over his exploded sophism.
But when the conclusion is a proposition concerning a Thing, the postulate involved in the definition which stands as the apparent premiss, is the existence of a Thing conformable to the definition, and not merely of an idea conformable to it.
And is not an irrefutable argument a demonstration? And how can one know the certainty of demonstrations except by examining the argument in detail, the form and the matter, in order to see if the form is good, and then if each premiss is either admitted or proved by another argument of like force, until one is able to make do with admitted premisses alone?
Careful arrangement of detail and premiss, cautious drawing of conclusions, and constant subjection of these conclusions to that process of literary comparison which I believe to be the strongest, the safest, the best engine of literary criticism altogether these are the things which I have endeavoured to observe here.
This is the major premiss, divested of the petitio principii, and cut down to as much as is really known by direct evidence.
In those books, every process which sets out from a less general and terminates in a more general expression,—which admits of being stated in the form, “This and that A are B, therefore every A is B,”—is called an induction, whether anything be really concluded or not; and the induction is asserted to be not perfect, unless every single individual of the class A is included in the antecedent, or premiss: that is, unless what we affirm of the class has already been ascertained to be true of every individual in it, so that the nominal conclusion is not really a conclusion, but a mere reassertion of the premisses.
For such reasons, no form of self-evidence seems to afford an absolute criterion of truth. Nevertheless, it is perhaps true that judgments having a high degree of subjective certainty are more apt to be true than other judgments. But if this be the case, it is a result to be demonstrated, not a premiss from which to start in defining truth and falsehood.
If the major premiss were negative, as, No men are omnipotent, it would assert, not that the attributes connoted by “man” never exist without, but that they never exist with, those connoted by “omnipotent:” from which, together with the minor premiss, it is concluded, that the same incompatibility exists between the attribute omnipotence and those constituting a king.
The fitness of the king to rule, the justice or efficiency of his government, were irrelevant details. Parliament could no more alter the succession, depose a sovereign, or limit his authority than it could amend the constitution of the universe. From this premiss James deduced a number of conclusions.
Well, having got your natural law in this way, when you are offered another apple which you find is hard and green, you say, "All hard and green apples are sour; this apple is hard and green, therefore this apple is sour." That train of reasoning is what logicians call a syllogism, and has all its various parts and terms, its major premiss, its minor premiss, and its conclusion.
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