John Locke

“ As if we could not reason, and have knowledge about particulars : whereas, in truth, the matter rightly considered, the immediate object of all our reasoning and knowledge, is nothing but particulars. Every man’s reasoning and knowledge is only about the ideas existing in his own mind ; which are truly, every one of them, particular existences : and our knowledge and reason about other things is only as they correspond with those particular ideas. So that the perception of the agreement or disagreement of our particular ideas is the whole and utmost of all our knowledge. ”

“ Reason, by its own penetration, where it is strong and exercised, usually sees quicker and clearer without syllogism. If use of those spectacles has so dimmed its sight, that it cannot without them see consequences or inconsequences in argumentation, I am not so unreasonable as to be against the using them. Every one knows what best fits his own sight ; but let him not thence conclude all in the dark, who use not just the same helps that he finds a need of.
5. Syllogism helps little in demonstration, less in probability. ”

“ And therefore we may take notice, that there are many men that reason exceeding clear and rightly, who know not how to make a syllogism. He that will look into many parts of Asia and America, will find men reason there perhaps as acutely as himself, who yet never heard of a syllogism, nor can reduce any one argument to those forms : and I believe scarce any one makes syllogisms in reasoning within himself. Indeed syllogism is made use of, on occasion, to discover a fallacy hid in a rhetorical flourish, or cunningly wrapt up in a smooth period ”

“ Now, to show such men the weakness of such an argumentation, there needs no more but to strip if of the superfluous ideas, which, blended and confounded with those on which the inference depends, seem to show a connexion where there is none ; or at least to hinder the discovery of the want of it ; and then to lay the naked ideas on which the force of the argumentation depends in their due order ; in which position the mind, taking a view of them, sees what connexion they have, and so is able to judge of the inference without any need of a syllogism at all. ”

“ God has been more bountiful to mankind than so. He has given them a mind that can reason, without being instructed in methods of syllogizing : the understanding is not taught to reason by these rules ; it has a native faculty to perceive the coherence or incoherence of its ideas, and can range them right, without any such perplexing repetitions. I say not this any way to lessen Aristotle, whom I look on as one of the greatest men amongst the ancients ; whose large views, acuteness, and penetration of thought and strength of judgment, few have equalled ”

“ It perfectly fails us where our ideas fail. It neither does nor can extend itself further than they do. And therefore, wherever we have no ideas, our reasoning stops, and we are at an end of our reckoning : and if at any time we reason about words which do not stand for any ideas, it is only about those sounds, and nothing else. ”

“ Reason is so far from clearing the difficulties which the building upon false foundations brings a man into, that if he will pursue it, it entangles him the more, and engages him deeper in perplexities. ”

“ Indeed syllogism is thought to be of necessary use, even to the lovers of truth, to show them the fallacies that are often concealed in florid, witty, or involved discourses. But that this is a mistake will appear, if we consider, that the reason why sometimes men who sincerely aim at truth are imposed upon by such loose, and, as they are called, rhetorical discourses, is, that their fancies being struck with some lively metaphorical representations, they neglect to observe, or do not easily perceive, what are the true ideas upon which the inference depends. ”

“ And even those who are able to master such intricate speculations, are fain sometimes to go over them again, and there is need of more than one review before they can arrive at certainty. But yet where the mind clearly retains the intuition it had of the agreement of any idea with another, and that with a third, and that with a fourth, &c., there the agreement of the first and the fourth is a demonstration, and produces certain knowledge ; which may be called rational knowledge, as the other is intuitive. ”

“ But I can be bold to say, that this age is adorned with some men of that strength of judgment and largeness of comprehension, that, if they would employ their thoughts on this subject, could open new and undiscovered ways to the advancement of knowledge. ”

“ Because our ideas are often obscure or imperfect. II. Our reason is often puzzled and at a loss because of the obscurity, confusion, or imperfection of the ideas it is employed about ; and there we are involved in difficulties and contradictions. Thus, not having any perfect idea of the least extension of matter, nor of infinity, we are at a loss about the divisibility of matter ; but having perfect, clear, and distinct ideas of number, our reason meets with none of those inextricable difficulties in numbers, nor finds itself involved in any contradictions about them. ”

“ For where the mind does not perceive this probable connexion, where it does not discern whether there be any such connexion or no ; there men’s opinions are not the product of judgment, or the consequence of reason, but the effects of chance and hazard, of a mind floating at all adventures, without choice and without direction. ”

“ I do not think that all mankind, even princes in matters that concern their crowns and dignities, are so much in love with falsehood and mistake, that they would everywhere have neglected to bring syllogism into the debates of moment ”

“ Now, if, of all mankind those who can make syllogisms are extremely few in comparison of those who cannot ; and if, of those few who have been taught logic, there is but a very small number who do any more than believe that syllogisms, in the allowed modes and figures do conclude right, without knowing certainly that they do so : if syllogisms must be taken for the only proper instrument of reason and means of knowledge, it will follow, that, before Aristotle, there was not one man that did or could know anything by reason ”

“ Sense and intuition reach but a very little way. The greatest part of our knowledge depends upon deductions and intermediate ideas : and in those cases where we are fain to substitute assent instead of knowledge, and take propositions for true, without being certain they are so, we have need to find out, examine, and compare the grounds of their probability. ”

“ For it very often confounds the connexion ; and, I think, every one will perceive in mathematical demonstrations, that the knowledge gained thereby comes shortest and clearest without syllogism.
Inference is looked on as the great act of the rational faculty, and so it is when it is rightly made : but the mind, either very desirous to enlarge its knowledge, or very apt to favour the sentiments it has once imbibed, is very forward to make inferences ; and therefore often makes too much haste, before it perceives the connexion of the ideas that must hold the extremes together. ”

“ I grant that mode and figure is commonly made use of in such cases, as if the detection of the incoherence of such loose discourses were wholly owing to the syllogistical form ; and so I myself formerly thought, till, upon a stricter examination, I now find, that laying the intermediate ideas naked in their due order, shows the incoherence of the argumentation better than syllogism ; not only as subjecting each link of the chain to the immediate view of the mind in its proper place, whereby its connexion is best observed ”

“ It is sufficient for me, if by a Discourse, perhaps something out of the way, I am sure, as to me, wholly new and unborrowed, I shall have given occasion to others to cast about for new discoveries, and to seek in their own thoughts for those right helps of art, which will scarce be found, I fear, by those who servilely confine themselves to the rules and dictates of others. ”

“ But to an ingenuous searcher after truth, who has no other aim but to find it, there is no need of any such form to force the allowing of the inference : the truth and reasonableness of it is better seen in ranging of the ideas in a simple and plain order : and hence it is that men, in their own inquiries after truth, never use syllogisms to convince themselves or in teaching others to instruct willing learners. ”

“ But however it be in knowledge, I think I may truly say, it is of far less, or no use at all in probabilities. For the assent there being to be determined by the preponderancy, after due weighing of all the proofs, with all circumstances on both sides, nothing is so unfit to assist the mind in that as syllogism ; which running away with one assumed probability, or one topical argument, pursues that till it has led the mind quite out of sight of the thing under consideration ”

“ This at least is certain, that he must be accountable for whatever mistakes he runs into : whereas he that makes use of the light and faculties God has given him, and seeks sincerely to discover truth by those helps and abilities he has, may have this satisfaction in doing his duty as a rational creature, that, though he should miss truth, he will not miss the reward of it. For he governs his assent right, and places it as he should, who, in any case or matter whatsoever, believes or disbelieves according as reason directs him. ”

“ Thus, we having but imperfect ideas of the operations of out minds, and of the beginning of motion, or thought how the mind produces either of them in us, and much imperfecter yet of the operation of God, run into great difficulties about free created agents, which reason cannot well extricate itself out of. ”

“ Because we often proceed upon wrong principles. IV. The mind, by proceeding upon false principles, is often engaged in absurdities and difficulties, brought into straits and contradictions, without knowing how to free itself : and in that case it is in vain to implore the help of reason, unless it be to discover the falsehood and reject the influence of those wrong principles. ”

“ And hence it is that men, even when they are baffled and silenced in this scholastic way, are seldom or never convinced, and so brought over to the conquering side : they perhaps acknowledge their adversary to be the more skilful disputant, but rest nevertheless persuaded of the truth on their side, and go away, worsted as they are, with the same opinion they brought with them : which they could not do if this way of argumentation carried light and conviction with it, and made men see where the truth lay ”

“ In this consists the evidence of all those maxims which nobody has any doubt about, but every man (does not, as is said, only assent to, but) knows to be true, as soon as ever they are proposed to his understanding. In the discovery of and assent to these truths, there is no use of the discursive faculty, no need of reasoning, but they are known by a superior and higher degree of evidence. ”

“ Secondly, Another reason that makes me doubt whether syllogism be the only proper instrument of reason, in the discovery of truth, is, that of whatever use mode and figure is pretended to be in the laying open of fallacy, (which has been above considered,) those scholastic forms of discourse are not less liable to fallacies than the plainer ways of argumentation ”

“ The first is, to allege the opinions of men, whose parts, learning, eminency, power, or some other cause has gained a name, and settled their reputation in the common esteem with some kind of authority. When men are established in any kind of dignity, it is thought a breach of modesty for others to derogate any way from it, and question the authority of men who are in possession of it. ”

“ For those that are not men of art, not knowing the true forms of syllogism, nor the reasons of them, cannot know whether they are made in right and conclusive modes and figures or no, and so are not at all helped by the forms they are put into ”

“ Some eyes want spectacles to see things clearly and distinctly ; but let not those that use them therefore say nobody can see clearly without them : those who do so will be thought, in favour of art (which, perhaps, they are beholden to,) a little too much to depress and discredit nature. ”

“ But God has not been so sparing to men to make them barely two-legged creatures, and left it to Aristotle to make them rational, i.e. those few of them that he could get so to examine the grounds of syllogisms, as to see that, in above three score ways that three propositions may be laid together, there are but about fourteen wherein one may be sure that the conclusion is right ; and upon what grounds it is, that, in these few, the conclusion is certain, and in the other not. ”

“ II. Secondly, Another way that men ordinarily use to drive others and force them to submit to their judgments, and receive their opinion in debate, is to require the adversary to admit what they allege as a proof, or to assign a better. ”

“ and it is looked upon as insolence, for a man to set up and adhere to his own opinion against the current stream of antiquity ; ”

“ This, as has been already observed, is seen only by the eye, or the perceptive faculty, of the mind, taking a view of them laid together, in a juxta-position ; which view of any two it has equally, whenever they are laid together in any proposition, whether that proposition be placed as a major or a minor, in a syllogism or no. ”