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

fails in this, that it at once resolves the judgments into their ultimate elements (the conceptions), and thus the means of combining these is lost, and that which is peculiar to the judgments as such and in their completeness, which is just what constitutes the necessity of the conclusion which follows from them, is lost sight of.

It thus falls into an error analogous to that which organic chemistry would commit if, for example, in the analysis of plants it were at once to reduce them to their ultimate elements, when it would find in all plants carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, but would lose the specific differences, to obtain which it is necessary to stop at their more special elements, the so-called alkaloids, and to take care to analyse these in their turn.

From three given conceptions no conclusion can as yet be drawn. It may certainly be said : the relation of two of them to the third must be given with them. But it is just Hie Judgments which combine these conceptions, that are the expression of this relation; thus judgments, not mere conceptions, are the material of the inference. Accordingly inference is essentially a comparison of two judgments.

The process of thought in our mind is concerned with these and the thoughts expressed by them, not merely with three conceptions. This is the case even when this process is imperfectly or not at all expressed in words; and it is as such, as a bringing together of the complete and unanalysed judgments, that we must consider it in order properly to understand the technical procedure of inference. From this there will then also follow the necessity for three really rational syllogistic figures.

As in the exposition of syllogistic reasoning by means of concept-spheres these are presented to the mind under the form of circles, so in the exposition by means of entire judgments we have to think these under the form of rods, which, for the purpose of comparison, are held together now by one end, now by the other. The different ways in which this can take place give the three figures

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Since now every premiss contains its subject and its predicate, these two conceptions are to be imagined as situated at the two ends of each rod.

The two judgments are now compared with reference to the two different conceptions in them; for, as has already been said, the third conception must be the same in both, and is therefore subject to no comparison, but is that vnth which, that is, in reference to which, the other two are compared ; it is the middle. The latter is acC3rdingly always only the means and not the chief concern.

The two different conceptions, on the other hand, are the subject of reflection, and to find out their relation to each other by means of the judgments in which they are contained is the aim of the syllogism. Therefore the conclusion speaks only of them, not of the middle, which was only a means, a measuring rod, which we let fall as soon as it has served its end.

Now if this conception which is identical in both propositions, thus the middle, is the subject of one premiss, the conception to be compared with it must be the predicate, and conversely.

Here at once is established a 'priori the possibility of three cases ; either the subject of one premiss is compared with the predicate of the other, or the subject of the one with the subject of the other, or, finally, the predicate of the one with the predicate of the other. Hence arise the three syllogistic figures of Aristotle ; the fourth, which was added somewhat impertinently, is ungenuine and a spurious form.

It is attributed to Galenus, but this rests only on Arabian authority. Each of the three figures exhibits a perfectly different, correct, and natural thought-process of the reason in inference. If in the two judgments to be compared the relation between the predicate of the one and the subject of the otlier is the object of the comparison, the first figure appears.

This figure alone has the advantage that the conceptions which in the conclusion are subject and predicate both appear already in the same character in the premisses; while in the two other figures one of them must always