The first argument, as will have been seen, rests upon the supposition that the name Socrates has a meaning; that man, wise, and poor, are parts of this meaning; and that by predicating them of Socrates we convey no information; a view of the signification of names which, for reasons already given (Note to § 4 of the chapter on Definition, supra, pp. [110], [111.]), I can not admit, and which, as applied to the class of names which Socrates belongs to, is at war with Mr. Bain’s own definition of a Proper Name (i., 148), “a single meaningless mark or designation appropriated to the thing.” Such names, Mr. Bain proceeded to say, do not necessarily indicate even human beings: much less then does the name Socrates include the meaning of wise or poor. Otherwise it would follow that if Socrates had grown rich, or had lost his mental faculties by illness, he would no longer have been called Socrates.
The second part of Mr. Bain’s argument, in which he contends that even when the premises convey real information, the conclusion is merely the premises with a part left out, is applicable, if at all, as much to universal propositions as to singular. In every syllogism the conclusion contains less than is asserted in the two premises taken together. Suppose the syllogism to be
All bees are intelligent,
All bees are insects, therefore
Some insects are intelligent:
one might use the same liberty taken by Mr. Bain, of joining together the two premises as if they were one—“All bees are insects and intelligent”—and might say that in omitting the middle term bees we make no real inference, but merely reproduce part of what had been previously said. Mr. Bain’s is really an objection to the syllogism itself, or at all events to the third figure: it has no special applicability to singular propositions.
Since this chapter was written, two treatises have appeared (or rather a treatise and a fragment of a treatise), which aim at a further improvement in the theory of the forms of ratiocination: Mr. De Morgan’s “Formal Logic; or, the Calculus of Inference, Necessary and Probable;” and the “New Analytic of Logical Forms,” attached as an Appendix to Sir William Hamilton’s Discussions on Philosophy, and at greater length, to his posthumous Lectures on Logic.
In Mr. De Morgan’s volume—abounding, in its more popular parts, with valuable observations felicitously expressed—the principal feature of originality is an attempt to bring within strict technical rules the cases in which a conclusion can be drawn from premises of a form usually classed as particular. Mr. De Morgan observes, very justly, that from the premises most Bs are Cs, most Bs are As, it may be concluded with certainty that some As are Cs, since two portions of the class B, each of them comprising more than half, must necessarily in part consist of the same individuals. Following out this line of thought, it is equally evident that if we knew exactly what proportion the “most” in each of the premises bear to the entire class B, we could increase in a corresponding degree the definiteness of the conclusion. Thus if 60 per cent. of B are included in C, and 70 per cent. in A, 30 per cent. at least must be common to both; in other words, the number of As which are Cs, and of Cs which are As, must be at least equal to 30 per cent. of the class B. Proceeding on this conception of “numerically definite propositions,” and extending it to such forms as these:—“45 Xs (or more) are each of them one of 70 Ys,” or “45 Xs (or more) are no one of them to be found among 70 Ys,” and examining what inferences admit of being drawn from the various combinations which may be made of premises of this description, Mr. De Morgan establishes universal formulæ for such inferences; creating for that purpose not only a new technical language, but a formidable array of symbols analogous to those of algebra.
Since it is undeniable that inferences, in the cases examined by Mr. De Morgan, can legitimately be drawn, and that the ordinary theory takes no account of them, I will not say that it was not worth while to show in detail how these also could be reduced to formulæ as rigorous as those of Aristotle. What Mr. De Morgan has done was worth doing once (perhaps more than once, as a school exercise); but I question if its results are worth studying and mastering for any practical purpose. The practical use of technical forms of reasoning is to bar out fallacies: but the fallacies which require to be guarded against in ratiocination properly so called, arise from the incautious use of the common forms of language; and the logician must track the fallacy into that territory, instead of waiting for it on a territory of his own. While he remains among propositions which have acquired the numerical precision of the Calculus of Probabilities, the enemy is left in possession of the only ground on which he can be formidable. And since the propositions (short of universal) on which a thinker has to depend, either for purposes of speculation or of practice, do not, except in a few peculiar cases, admit of any numerical precision; common reasoning can not be translated into Mr. De Morgan’s forms, which therefore can not serve any purpose as a test of it.
Sir William Hamilton’s theory of the “quantification of the predicate” may be described as follows:
“Logically” (I quote his words) “we ought to take into account the quantity, always understood in thought, but usually, for manifest reasons, elided in its expression, not only of the subject, but also of the predicate of a judgment.” All A is B, is equivalent to all A is some B. No A is B, to No A is any B. Some A is B, is tantamount to some A is some B. Some A is not B, to Some A is not any B. As in these forms of assertion the predicate is exactly co-extensive with the subject, they all admit of simple conversion; and by this we obtain two additional forms—Some B is all A, and No B is some A. We may also make the assertion All A is all B, which will be true if the classes A and B are exactly co-extensive. The last three forms, though conveying real assertions, have no place in the ordinary classification of Propositions. All propositions, then, being supposed to be translated into this language, and written each in that one of the preceding forms which answers to its signification, there emerges a new set of syllogistic rules, materially different from the common ones. A general view of the points of difference may be given in the words of Sir W. Hamilton (Discussions, 2d ed., p. 651):
“The revocation of the two terms of a Proposition to their true relation; a proposition being always an equation of its subject and its predicate.