Note 9 — Chapter III · OF THE FUNCTIONS AND LOGICAL VALUE OF THE SYLLOGISM.

The language of ratiocination would, I think, be brought into closer agreement with the real nature of the process, if the general propositions employed in reasoning, instead of being in the form All men are mortal, or Every man is mortal, were expressed in the form Any man is mortal. This mode of expression, exhibiting as the type of all reasoning from experience "The men A, B, C, &c. are so and so, therefore any man is so and so," would much better manifest the true idea—that inductive reasoning is always, at bottom, inference from particulars to particulars, and that the whole function of general propositions in reasoning, is to vouch for the legitimacy of such inferences.