known to us at all, they must be original data of consciousness.  Here was a perfect paradise of question begging.  The ultimate major premise in every argument being assumed, it could of course be fashioned according to the particular conclusion it was called in to prove.  Thus an ‘artificial ignorance,’ as Locke calls it, was produced, which had the effect of sanctifying prejudice by recognizing so-called necessities of thought as the only bases of reasoning.  It is true, that outside of the logic of the schools great advances had been made in the rules of scientific investigation; but these rules were not only imperfect in themselves, but their connection with the law of causation was but imperfectly realized, and their true relation to syllogism hardly dreamt of.

Mr. Mill altered all this.  He demonstrated that the general type of reasoning is neither from generals to particulars, nor from particulars to generals, but from particulars to particulars.  “If from our experience of John, Thomas, &c., who once were living, but are now dead, we are entitled to conclude that all human beings are mortal, we might surely, without any logical inconsequence, have concluded at once from those instances, that the Duke of Wellington is mortal.  The mortality of John, Thomas, and others is, after all, the whole evidence we have for the mortality of the Duke of Wellington.  Not one iota is added to the proof by interpolating a general proposition.”  We not only may, according to Mr. Mill, reason from some particular instances to others, but we frequently do so.  As, however, the instances which are sufficient to prove one fresh instance must be sufficient to prove a general proposition, it is most convenient to at once infer that general proposition, which then becomes a formula according to which (but not from which) any number of particular inferences may be made.  The work of deduction is the interpretation of these formulas, and therefore, strictly speaking, is not inferential at all.  The real inference was accomplished when the universal proposition was arrived at.

It will easily be seen that this explanation of the deductive process completely turns the tables on the transcendental school.  All reasoning is shown to be at bottom inductive.  Inductions and their interpretation make up the whole of logic; and to induction accordingly Mr. Mill devoted his chief attention.  For the first time induction was treated as the opus magnum of logic, and the fundamental principles of science traced to their inductive origin.  It was this, taken with his theory of the syllogism, which worked the great change.  Both his “System of Logic” and his “Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy” are for the most part devoted to fortifying this position, and demolishing beliefs inconsistent with it.  As a systematic psychologist Mr. Mill has not done so much as either Professor Bain or Mr. Herbert Spencer.  The perfection of his method, its application, and the uprooting of prejudices which stood in its way,—­this was the task to which Mr. Mill applied himself with an ability and success rarely matched and never surpassed.