Note 401 — Chapter VII

This account of the enthymeme appears to have been originally based on the erroneous idea that the name signified the retention of one premiss in the mind, ἐν θυμῷ. Thus, in the Port Royal Logic, an enthymeme is described as “a syllogism perfect in the mind, but imperfect in the expression, since some one of the propositions is suppressed as too clear and too well known, and as being easily supplied by the mind of those to whom we speak” (p. 229). As regards the true origin of the name enthymeme, see Mansel’s Aldrich, p. 218.