The connexion must be discovered before it can be put into syllogisms.
Now I ask, whether the connexion of the
extremes be not more clearly seen in this simple and natural disposition, than in the perplexed repetitions, and
jumble of five or six syllogisms. I must beg pardon for calling it jumble, till somebody shall put these ideas into
so many syllogisms, and then say that they are less jumbled, and their connexion more visible, when they are
transposed and repeated, and spun out to a greater length in artificial forms, than in that short and natural plain
order they are laid down in here, wherein everyone may see it, and wherein they must be seen before they can be
put into a train of syllogisms. For the natural order of the connecting ideas must direct the order of the syllogisms,
and a man must see the connexion of each intermediate idea with those that it connects, before he can with reason
make use of it in a syllogism. And when all those syllogisms are made, neither those that are nor those that are not
logicians will see the force of the argumentation, i.e.,, the connexion of the extremes, one jot the better. [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; though by them the natural order, wherein the mind could judge of their respective connexion, being
disturbed, renders the illation much more uncertain than without them.] And as for the logicians themselves, they
see the connexion of each intermediate idea with those it stands between, (on which the force of the inference
depends,) as well before as after the syllogism is made, or else they do not see it at all. For a syllogism neither
shows nor strengthens the connexion of any two ideas immediately put together, but only by the connexion seen
in them shows what connexion the extremes have one with another. But what connexion the intermediate has with
either of the extremes in the syllogism, that no syllogism does or can show. That the mind only doth or can
perceive as they stand there in that juxta-position by its own view, to which the syllogistical form it happens to be
in gives no help or light at all: it only shows that if the intermediate idea agrees with those it is on both sides
immediately applied to; then those two remote ones, or, as they are called, extremes, do certainly agree; and
therefore the immediate connexion of each idea to that which it is applied to on each side, on which the force of
the reasoning depends, is as well seen before as after the syllogism is made, or else he that makes the syllogism
could never see it at all. 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.
