Reason is the faculty of perceiving coherences. Effective reasoning is stating them so that others cannot but see them too. 'Reasoning on the abstrusest questions is nothing more than arriving at a remote truth by discovering its coherence with the preceding facts in the same chain.'*
* Uses and Beauties of Euclid, p. 52.
A syllogism is a peculiar form of expression, in which every argument may be stated. It consists of three propositions.
1. Whoever have their heads cut off ought to be allowed to ask the reason why.
2. Women have their heads cut off.
3. Therefore women ought to be allowed to ask (politically) the reason why.
This is an argument of Mad. de Stael, in allusion to the beheading of women in France, without allowing them any voice in making the laws which determine the offences for which they suffered.
A syllogism is constructed upon the principle (known as the Dictum of Aristotle) that whatever is affirmed or denied universally of a whole class of things, may be affirmed or denied of anything comprehended in that class. Thus the first proposition introduces the class of persons who have their heads cut off. Of this class it is affirmed that they ought to be allowed to ask the reason why. But women are included in the class of persons who have their heads cut off, and consequently that may be affirmed of them which is affirmed of the whole class—that they should be allowed to ask the reason why.
'To prove an affirmative,' says Mr. Mill, 'the argument must admit of being stated in this form:—
All animals are mortal;