leader of the Republican party is willing to risk his cause on arguments such as those contained in his recent magazine article; when the President of the nation seriously and deliberately tells the country that the import duties levied on commodities are paid not by the consumer, but by the foreign producer; when, in spite of the warnings given by the numerous and almost continuous series of labor troubles that have taken place for some years past, congressional orators assure themselves that wages are high and the working classes in a very satisfactory condition; when, in order to create a profitable trade, a party proposes to subsidize ocean steamships to do what they otherwise find it unprofitable to do it would seem that the greatest need of the day was a compulsory system of instruction in dialectics, with a view more especially to impress on the mind of legislators the relations between cause and effect.
The two methods of reasoning employed in this discussion appear in marked contrast to each other, and it is interesting to see how their advocates are led to conclusions directly opposite. Vulgarly speaking, it is the school of Aristotle opposed to that of Bacon.
Mr. Gladstone deduces his results from general truths. Mr. Blaine arrives at his conclusions by induction. These two methods, known as the method of syllogism and that of induction, have been practiced by mankind in all ages, before the days when reasoning became an art and logic a science. Both may be employed with safety where practicable, and both will lead to the detection of truth, if properly carried out.[1] Induction is used in discovery, syllogism in verification. The latter begins where the former ends. Induction requires both patience and skill, and, if ill performed, will as assuredly lead to error as to truth when well performed. Both are constantly used by those who never heard of a major or a minor premise, of comparentiæ or rejectiones. The man who, learning that alcohol is poisonous, refuses to drink whisky, reasons by the method of syllogism. Likewise, the man
- ↑ "We shall find that in the study of moral philosophy, as in the study of all subjects not yet raised to sciences, there are not only two methods, but that each method leads to different consequences. If we proceed by induction, we arrive at one conclusion; if we proceed by deduction, we arrive at another. This difference in the results is always a proof that the subject in which the difference exists is not yet capable of scientific treatment, and that some preliminary difficulties have to be removed before it can pass from the empirical stage into the scientific one. As soon as those difficulties are got rid of the results obtained by induction will correspond with those obtained by deduction, supposing, of course, that both lines of argument are fairly managed. In such cases it will be of no importance whether we reason from particulars to generals or from generals to particulars. Either plan will yield the same consequences, and this agreement between the consequences proves that our investigation is, properly speaking, scientific." (Buckle's History of Civilization, vol. ii, p. 337.)
