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Their mistake was, that they based on just these few premisses a general theory of government, in forgetfulness that such should proceed by deduction from the whole of the laws of human nature, since each effect is an aggregate result of many causes operating now through the same ones, now through different ones, of these laws.
But common sense is undismayed by the pragmatist's discovery that if the Syllogism is to have any sense its premisses must be taken as disputable; for, unlike Formal Logic, it has perceived that men do not reason about what they think they know for certain, but about matters in dispute. It is not necessary to dwell at length on the futility of the formal notion of Induction.
I can understand Atheism, and I can understand a revealing God, but not a God that dwells in the thick darkness, and is yet Love and Righteousness, and looks down upon this world and never puts out a finger to point the path of duty. A silent God seems to me no God but an Almighty Devil. Revelation is the plain conclusion from the premisses that 'good and upright is the Lord!
And in accordance with this, many have thought that the peculiar nature of the evidence of ratiocination consisted in the impossibility of admitting the premisses and rejecting the conclusion without a contradiction in terms. This theory, however is inadmissible as an explanation of the grounds on which ratiocination itself rests.
The only way to stop the process that occurred to logicians was an appeal to the 'self-evident' truth of 'intuitions'; but this has been shown to be argumentatively worthless. From this difficulty the pragmatist alone escapes, by assuming his premisses provisionally and arguing forwards, in order to test them by their consequences.
In mechanics you advance from sure premisses to sure conclusions; in optics you form your undeniable facts into system, arrive at general principles, and then again infallibly apply them: here you have Science.
Indeed, it was partly my conviction that there is little to be seen in the north, which, arriving at your father's conclusions, though from different premisses, inclined my course in this direction, where perhaps I shall see as little.
I cannot help thinking that this fallacy imposes upon some modern reasoners; that they assume that they have got the data because they have put together the formulæ which would be useful if they had the data; and, in short, that you can get more out of a mill than you put into it; or, in other words, that more conclusions than really follow can be got out of premisses, simply because you show what would follow if you had the required knowledge.
It is obvious that in this view of history Machiavelli was inspired and instructed by the ancients. And it followed from his premisses that the study of the past is of the highest value because it enables men to see what is to come; since to all social events at any period there are correspondences in ancient times. The lawgiver must assume for his purposes that all men are bad: ib. i. 3.
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