is similarly useful when you want to construct
an argument from self-evident principles.

All that the Syllogism could show was the consistency of the premisses
with the conclusion. The conclusion could not go beyond the premisses,
because the questioner could not go beyond the admissions of the
respondent. There is indeed an advance, but not an advance upon the
two premisses taken together. There is an advance upon any one of
them, and this advance is made with the help of the other. Both must
be admitted: a respondent may admit one without being committed to
the conclusion. Let him admit both and he cannot without
self-contradiction deny the conclusion. That is all.

Dialectic of the Yes and No kind is no longer practised. Does any
analogous use for the Syllogism remain? Is there a place for it as a
safeguard against error in modern debate? As a matter of fact it
is probably more useful now than it was for its original purpose,
inasmuch as modern discussion, aiming at literary grace and spurning
exact formality as smacking of scholasticism and pedantry, is
much more flabby and confused. In the old dialectic play there was
generally a clear question proposed. The interrogative form forced
this much on the disputants. The modern debater of the unpedantic,
unscholastic school is not so fettered, and may often be seen
galloping wildly about without any game in sight or scent, his maxim
being to--

Spur boldly on, and dash through thick and thin,
Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in.

Now the syllogistic analysis may often be of some use in helping us
to keep a clear head in the face of a confused argument. There is a
brilliant defence of the syllogism as an analysis of arguments in the
_Westminster Review_ for January, 1828. The article was a notice of
Whately's Logic: it was written by J. S. Mill. For some reason it
has never been reprinted, but it puts the utility of the Syllogism on
clearer ground than Mill afterwards sought for it.

Can a fallacy in argument be detected at once? Is common-sense
sufficient? Common-sense would require some inspection. How would
it proceed? Does common-sense inspect the argument in a lump or
piecemeal? All at once or step by step? It analyses. How? First, it
separates out the propositions which contribute to the conclusion from
those which do not, the essential from the irrelevant. Then it
states explicitly all that may have been assumed tacitly. Finally, it
enumerate