2. It creates a reliance on principles, which originate in the hypotheses of philosophers, not in the laws of nature.
3. It makes truth the result of the forms of argument, not of scientific evidence.***
* Or, Fakoro, as indeed all the particulars in this place
recited.
** Or, Dokamo. but a brief summary of the subjects
comprised in his logic in reference to the syllogism.
***Bruce. These references to Fakoro and Dokamo are Whately's.
Lord Kames cites from the father of logic the following syllogism, which will bear repetition as an extraordinary instance of that assumption for which the Logic of the Schools provides no remedy:—
Heavy bodies naturally tend to the centre of the universe.
We know, by experience, that heavy bodies tend to the centre of the earth.
Therefore the centre of the earth is the centre of the universe.
But by what experience did Aristotle discover the centre of the universe, so as to become aware that heavy bodies naturally tend there? On what facts rest the measurement of the radii from our earth to the boundless circumference of space? How did he ascertain the limits of that which has no limits? Yet, strange to say, the Logic of the Schools prides itself in leaving us where the Stagyrite left us.
'When mankind began to reason on the phenomena of nature, they were solicitous to abstract, and they formed general propositions from a limited observation. Though these propositions were assumed, they were admitted as true. They were not examined by appeals to nature, but by comparison with other propositions.'*
In this syllogism from Aristotle, there is the usual compliance with accredited rules, and the same defiance of common sense. Such examples are deemed perfect reasoning and legitimate argument; but is it not a mockery to encourage the belief that we can have reason and argument, without the truth? Only this shallow consolation remains to us. If the logician of the schoole does not enlighten the understanding, he is at least reputed not to offend the taste, and he wins the equivocal praise of Butler:—
'He'll run in debt by disputation,
And pay with ratiocination;
All this by syllogism, true
In mood and figure, he will do.'
Syllogisms are to truth what rhyme is to poetry. 'It is a well known fact that verse, faultless in form, may be utterly destitute of poetic fire or feeling.'**