ight course to take,
if it be a practical matter. But analytic thought has made no tracks,
and we cannot justify ourselves to others. In ethical, psychological,
and aesthetic matters, to give a clear reason for one's judgment is
universally recognized as a mark of rare genius. The helplessness of
uneducated people to account for their likes and dislikes is often
ludicrous. Ask the first Irish girl why she likes this country better or
worse than her home, and see how much she can tell you. But if you ask
your most educated friend why he prefers Titian to Paul Veronese, you
will hardly get more of a reply; and you will probably get absolutely
none if you inquire why Beethoven reminds him of Michael Angelo, or how
it comes that a bare figure with unduly flexed joints, by the latter,
can so suggest the moral tragedy of life.... The well-known story of the
old judge advising the new one never to give reasons for his decisions,
'the decisions will probably be right, the reasons will surely be
wrong,' illustrates this. The doctor will feel that the patient is
doomed, the dentist will have a premonition that the tooth will break,
though neither can articulate a reason for his foreboding. The reason
lies embedded, but not yet laid bare, in all the previous cases dimly
suggested by the actual one, all calling up the same conclusion, which
the adept thus finds himself swept on to, he knows not how or why."[42]

The small boy who said that he could not keep step because he had a cold
in his head was relying on a sound general truth, _Colds in the head
make one stupid_, for his major premise, but his condition prevented his
disentangling it; and all of us every day use minor premises for which
we should be incapable of stating the major.

A second practical use of the syllogism is to set forth a chain of
reasoning in incontrovertible form. If you have a general principle
which is granted, and have established the fact that your case certainly
falls under it, you can make an effective summing up by throwing the
reasoning into the form of a syllogism.

Conversely, you can use a syllogism to bring out some essential part of
the reasoning of an opponent which you know will not commend itself to
the audience, as did Lincoln in his debate with Douglas at Galesburg.
Douglas had defended the Dred Scott decision of the United States
Supreme Court, which decided that the right of property in a slave is
affirmed by the United States Constitu