simple suggestions only which the laws of mind evolve. We are susceptible of the feeling of relation of parts of the train, as much as of the conceptions themselves; and when A has excited the relative conception of B, it is not wonderful that we should feel the relation of A and B ; or, when C is excited, the relation of B and C, more than that any other feeling of our mind should arise in its ordinary circumstances,-that we should hear the sound of a cannon, in consequence of the vibration of a few invisible particles of air, or see the flash which precedes it, in consequence of some slight affection of our visual nerves. It is impossible for us to will any one of the conceptions in the series A, B, C, D, though we may have the general wish of discovering the relation of A and D, and consequently their relation to any common objects of comparison. It is equally impossible for us to will our feeling of any one of the relations of these to each other, though we may be desirous of discovering their relations; since to will any particular feeling of relation, would be to have already felt that relation. But the conceptions rise after each other, in a certain order, in consequence of the natural order of the course of suggestion; and our feelings of relation, therefore, and consequently our propositions, which are only our feelings of relations expressed in language, correspond, as might be supposed, with the regularity of the conceptions which suggest them.

The sagacity of which Locke and other writers speak, may then, since it is nothing more than a form of our simple suggestion itself, be reduced to that peculiar tendency of the suggesting principle, varying in different minds, of which I before treated, when considering the Secondary Laws of Suggestion, in their relation to Original Genius. The same objects do not suggest to all the same objects, even where past observation and experience may have been the same; because the peculiar suggestions of the objects, the relations of which are afterwards felt, depend, in a great measure, on constitutional tendencies, varying in different individuals, and, in a great measure, also on tendencies modified by long habit; and, therefore, varying in different individuals, as these habits may have been different. To some minds, -the common minds, which, in the great multitudes of our race, think what others have thought, as they do what others have done,-the conceptions which form their trains of memory, that scarcely can be called trains of reflection, rise, as we have seen, according to the relation of mere contiguity, or former proximity in time, of the related images. The conceptions of minds of a higher order, rise in almost infinite variety, because they rise according to a relation which does not depend on former co-existence of the very images themselves, but is itself almost infinitely various.

It is this tendency of our suggestions, to rise according to the relation of analogy, which gives inventive vigour to our reasoning, as it gives richness and novelty to our products of mere imagination. By continually presenting to us new objects, in succession, it, of course, presents to us new relations, and leads the philosophic genius from the simplest perceptions of objects, which the dullest of mankind equally behold, but in which the objects themselves are all which they see, to those sublime relations of universal nature, which bind every thing to every thing, in the whole infinity of worlds, and of which the knowledge of the immensity is scarcely so wonderful as the apparent insignificance of the means by which the knowledge has been acquired.

The sagacity, then, of which Locke and other writers speak, is as little

wonderful in itself, as any other modification of the suggesting principle Since the tendencies to suggestion are various, in different minds, the conceptions, which rise according to those tendencies, are of course various; and with the order of our conceptions, that are felt to be related, the relations. which we feel must vary. There may, indeed, be the same conclusion formed, when the intervening conceptions, in the trains of reflection of different individuals, have been different. But it is much more likely, that, when these intervening conceptions, of which the relations are felt, have been different, the conclusion, or ultimate relation which results from the whole, should itself be different; and that men should not agree in opinion, seems, therefore, to be almost a part of the very laws of intellect, on which the simplest phenomena of thought depend. Even by the same individual, as I remarked before, when treating of the Laws of Simple Suggestion, what opposite conclusions are formed on the same subjects, in different circumstances of health and happiness, or of disease and misfortune,-and conclusions which are drawn with the same logical justness from the premises, in one case, as in the other. The process of reasoning, which is only the continued feeling of the relations of the conceptions that have arisen by the common. laws of suggestion, is equally accurate; but, though the reasoning itself may have been as accurate, the conceptions of which the successive relations have been felt, during the process of reasoning, were different, in consequence of the tendency of the mind in these different states, to suggest different and almost opposite images. This tendency to form, under slight changes of circumstances, opposite conclusions, on the same subjects, is happily illustrated by Chaulieu, the French poet, in some verses, in which he considers himself as viewing nature during a fit of the gout, and of course seeing nothing in it but what is dreadful; when he is surprised to find different views breaking upon him, of beauty in the universe, and benevolence in its Author, and discovers that the change has arisen, not from any greater brightness of the sky, or from any happier objects that surround him, but from the mere cessation of that paroxysm, which had shed, while it lasted, its own darkness on the scene. It is almost as little possible for him, whose train of conceptions is uniformly gloomy, to look upon nature, or, I may say, even upon the God of Nature, in the same light, as that happier mind, which is more disposed to images of joy, as for one, to whose eyes the sunshine has never carried light, to think of the surface of that earth on which he treads, with the same feeling of beauty and admiration, as the multitudes around him, whose eyes are awake to all the colours that adorn it. What is true, in these extreme cases, is not less true in cases that are less remarkable. How few are the opinions of any sort, in which the greater number of mankind concur ; and, even in the case of those opinions, in which they are unanimous, how few, if they were to attempt to support them by argument, would support them by argument precisely similar. All might set out with the same conception, in their primary design; and, if the discovery of the strongest proofs depended on the mere will to discover the strongest, all would instantly, by the exercise of this simple will, be omnipotent logicians. But all are not omnipotent logicians,-for the intermediate conceptions which rise to one mind, do not rise to others; and the relations, therefore, which those intermediate conceptions suggest, are felt, of course, and stated, only by those to whom the conceptions which suggest them have arisen.

The differences of opinion in mankind, then,-far from being wonderful,

we wish to discover the proportion of A to D, these conceptions, as long as the very wish which involves them remains, must, by the simple laws of suggestion, excite other conceptions related to them; and in the multitude of relative objects, thus capable of being suggested, it is not wonderful, that there should be some one B or C, which has a common relation to both A and D; and which, therefore, becomes a measure for comparing them, or suggests this very relation without any such intentional comparison. Indeed, since A and D, both conceived together, form one complex feeling of the mind, it might be expected, that the relative objects, most likely to arise by suggestion, would be such as have a common relation to both parts-if I may so term them of the complex feeling, by which they are suggested,-the very proofs, or intermediate conceptions, which form the links of our demonstration.

You are aware, that in these remarks, I speak of the series of propositions that arise in our mind when we meditate on any subject, not of the series which we submit, in discourse or in written works, to the consideration of others. Though it is impossible for us, even in these cases, to will a single conception or a single feeling of relation,-since this would be to will into existence that which already exists,-it is, unquestionably, in our power not to clothe in words the conceptions or relations that have arisen in our thought; and, by this mere omission of the parts of our internal series, which we regret as feeble or irrelative to our principal object, the whole series of propositions, as expressed, may seem very different, certainly far more forcible, than that which really passed through our mind, and produced in us that conviction or persuasion which we wish to diffuse. But still it must be remembered, that it is the omission only which makes the difference, and that in the whole series of propositions which we express in language, there is not a single conception or feeling of relation which we have directly willed.

Such is the process of ratiocination, considered as a natural process of the mind. But what are we to think of that art of reasoning, which, for so many ages, banished reason from the schools;-of that art which rendered it so laborious a drudgery, to be a little more ignorant than before, which could produce so much disputation without any subject of dispute, and so many proud victories of nothing over less than nothing! I need not say that it is to the scholastic art of logic I allude.

That there may be, or rather that there is, a rational logic, I am far from denying; and that many useful directions, in conformity with a certain system of rules, may be given to the inexperienced student that may facilitate to him acquisitions of knowledge, which but for such directions, he would have made only more slowly, or perhaps not made at all. The art of reasoning, however, which a judicious logic affords, is not so much the art of acquiring knowledge as the art of communicating it to others, or recording it, in the manner that may be most profitable for our own future advancement in the track which we have been pursuing. Its direct benefit to ourselves is rather negative than positive-teaching us the sources of error in our mental constitution, and in all the accidental circumstances of the language which we are obliged to use, and the society in which we must mingle,-and thus rather saving us from what is false, than bestowing on us what is true. In

deed, since we cannot, as I have shown, produce, directly, in our mind, any one conception, or any one feeling of relation, it is very evident that the influence of any art of reasoning on our trains of thought must be indirect only.

But if an art of reasoning is to be given to us, it is surely to be an art which is to render the acquisition of knowledge more easy, not more difficult, an art which is to avail itself of the natural tendency of the mind to the discovery of truth, not to counteract this tendency, and to force the mind, if it be possible, to suspend the very progress which was leading it to truth. With which of these characters did the syllogistic logic more exactly correspond?

The natural progress of reasoning I have already explained to you, and illustrated by examples both of the analytic and proportional kind. One conception follows another conception, according to certain laws of suggestion, to which our Divine Author has adapted our mental constitution; and by another set of laws which the same Divine Author has established, certain feelings of relation arise from the consideration of the suggesting and suggested object. This is all in which reasoning, as felt by us, truly consists. We have the conception of A, it suggests B, and, these two conceptions coexisting, we feel some relation which they bear to each other. B, thus suggested, suggests C; and the relation of these is felt in like manner, and thus, through the longest ratiocination, analytical or proportional, each subject of our thought suggests something which forms a part of it, and is involved in it, or something which has to it a certain relation of proportion; and the relation of comprehension in the one case, or of proportion in the other case, is felt accordingly at every step. Nothing, surely, can be simpler than a process of this kind; and it is not easy to conceive how the process could be made shorter than nature herself has rendered it, unless every truth were known to us by intuition. Objects, and the relations of objects,-these are all which reasoning involves; and these must always be involved in every reasoning. While reasoning, then, or a series of propositions is necessary for the developement of truth, the intervening conceptions which form the subjects of those propositions that connect one remote conception with another must arise successively in the mind, and their relations be felt, in like manner, successively. What is it which the syllogistic art would confer on us in addition? To shorten the process of arriving at truth, it forces us to use, in every case, three propositions instead of the two which nature directs us to use. Instead of allowing us to say man is fallible-he may therefore err, even when he thinks himself most secure from error-which is the spontaneous order of analysis in reasoning,-the syllogistic art compels us to take a longer journey to the same conclusion, by the use of what it calls a major proposition, a proposition which never rises spontaneously, for the best of all reasons, that it cannot rise without our knowledge of the very truth, which is by supposition unknown. To proceed, in the regular form of a syllogism, we must say all beings that are fallible may err, even when they think themselves most secure from error. But man is a fallible being-he may therefore err, even when he thinks himself most secure from error. In our spontaneous reasonings, in which we arrive at precisely the same conclusions, and with a feeling of evidence precisely the same, there are, as I have said, no major propositions, but simply what in this futile art are termed technically the minor and the conclusion. The invention and formal statement of a ma

jor proposition, then, in every case, serve only to retard the progress of discovery, not to quicken it, or render it in the slightest degree more sure.

This retardation of the progress of reasoning, is one circumstance which distinguishes the syllogism; but the absurdity, which is implied in the very theory of it, distinguishes it still more. It constantly assumes, as the first stage of that reasoning, by which we are to arrive at a particular truth, our previous knowledge of that particular truth. The major is the very conclusion itself under another form, and its truth is not more felt than that which it professes to develope. Thus, to take one of the trifling examples, which, in books of logic, are usually given, with a most appropriate selection, to illustrate this worse than trifling art-when, in order to prove that John is a sinner, I do not adduce any particular sin of which he has been guilty, but draw up my accusation more irresistibly, by the major of a syllogism. All men are sinners. John is a man; therefore John is a sinner. If I really attached any meaning to my major proposition, all men are sinners, I must, at that very moment, have felt as completely that John was a sinner, as after I had pursued him, technically, through the minor and conclusion.

The great error of the theory of the syllogism-an error, which, if my time allowed, it would be interesting to trace in its relation to the ideal systems of forms and species, which prevailed when the syllogistic art was invented, and during the long ages of its sway-consisted in supposing, that, because all our knowledge may be technically reduced, in some measure, to general maxims, these maxims have naturally a prior and paramount existence in our thought, and give rise to those very reasonings which, on the contrary, give rise to them.

It is not on account of our previous assent to the axiom, a whole is greater than a part, that we believe any particular whole to be greater than any part of it; but we feel this truth in every particular case, by its own intuitive evidence, and the axiom only expresses briefly our various feelings of this kind without giving occasion to them. The infant, from whom half his cake has been taken, who has seen it taken, and who yet does not believe that he has less cake afterwards than he had before, is very likely to prove a most obstinate denier of that general proposition, by which we might attempt to convince him, that he now must have less cake than he had at first, because a whole is greater than a part, and consequently a part less than a whole. "Is it possible," says Locke, "to know that one and two are equal to three, but by virtue of this or some such axiom, the whole is equal to all its parts taken together? Many a one knows, that one and two are equal to three, without having heard or thought on that or any other axiom, by which it might be proved; and knows it as certainly as any other man knows that the whole is equal to all its parts, or any other maxim, and all from the same principle of self-evidence; the equality of those ideas being as visible and certain to him, without that or any other axiom, as with it,-it needing no proof to make it perceived. Nor, after the knowledge that the whole is equal to all its parts, does he know that one and two are equal to three, better or more certainly, than he did before; for if there be any odds in those ideas, the whole and parts are more obscure, or at least more difficult to be settled in the mind, than those of one, two, and three."*

The general axiom, then, is in every case posterior to the separate feelings, of which it is only the brief expression, or, at least, without which, as

Essay Concerning Human Understanding, B. iv. c. vii. sect. 10.