The World as Will and Idea, Vol. II — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp

through half-conscious, and even inarticulate, processes of thought, compared with the rest of our stock of knowledge, reflected upon, and, as it were, shaken up together, till at last the right major finds the right minor, and these immediately take up their proper places, and at once the conclusion exists as a light that has suddenly arisen for us, without any action on our part, as if it were an inspiration ; for we cannot comprehend how we and others have so long been in ignorance of it.

It is true that in a happily organised mind this process goes on more quickly and easily than in ordinary minds ; and just because it is carried on spontaneously and without distinct consciousness it cannot be learned. Therefore Goethe says : " How easy anything is he knows who has discovered it, he knows who has attained to it.

As an illustration of the process of thought here described we may compare it to those padlocks which consist of rings with letters ; hanging on the box of a travelling carriage, they are shaken so long that at last the letters oi the word come together in their order and the lock opens For the rest, we must also remember that the syllogisn consists in the process of thought itself, and the word.' and propositions through which it is expressed onlj indicate the traces it has left behind it — they are relatec to it as the sound-figures of sand are related to the note: whose vibrations they express.

When we reflect upoi something, we collect our data, reduce them to judgments which are all quickly brought together and compared, an< thereby the conclusions which it is possible to draw froc them are instantly arrived at by means of the use of al the three syllogistic figures. Yet on account of the grea rapidity of this operation only a few words are used, an sometimes none at all, and only the conclusion is formall expressed.

Thus it sometimes happens that because i this way, or even merely intuitively, i.e., by a happ appergu, we have brought some new truth to consciousnes we now treat it as a conclusion and seek premisses for i that is, we desire to prove it, for as a rule knowledg

ON THE SYLLOGISM.

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exists earlier than its proofs. We then go through our stock of knowledge in order to see whether we can find some truth in it in which the newly discovered truth was already implicitly contained, or two propositions which would give this as a result if they were brought together according to rule. On the other hand, every judicial proceeding affords a most complete and imposing syllogism, a syllogism in the first figure. The civil or criminal transgression complained of is the minor; it is established by the prosecutor. The law applicable to the case is the major. The judgment is the conclusion, which therefore, as something necessary, is "merely recognised" by the judge.

But now I shall attempt to give the simplest and most correct exposition of the peculiar mechanism of inference.

Judging, this elementary and most important process of thought, consists in the comparison of two conceptions ; inference in the comparison of two judgments. Yet ordinarily in text-books inference is also referred to the comparison of conceptions, though of three, because from the relation which two of these conceptions have to a third their relation to each other may be known. Truth cannot be denied to this view also; and since it iffords opportunity for the perceptible demonstration of syllogistic relations by means of drawn concept-spheres, 1 method approved of by me in the text, it has the idvantage of making the matter easily comprehensible. But it seems to me that here, as in so many cases, comprehensibility is attained at the cost of thoroughness. The real process of thought in inference, with which the :hree syllogistic figures and their necessity precisely agree, .3 not thus recognised. In inference we operate not with nere conceptions but with whole judgments, to which piality, which lies only in the copula and not in the 3onceptions, and also quantity are absolutely essential, ind indeed we have further to add modality. That exposition of inference as a relation of three conceptions

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