conclusions, as immediate or mediate, is an abuse of
language, derived from times before the distinction between inference as
process and inference as result was generally felt. No doubt we ought
rather to speak of Immediate and Mediate Evidence; but it is of little
use to attempt to alter the traditional expressions of the science.

An Immediate Inference, then, is one that depends for its proof upon
only one other proposition, which has the same, or more extensive,
terms (or matter). Thus that _one means to national prosperity is
popular education_ is an immediate inference, if the evidence for it is
no more than the admission that _popular education is a means to
national prosperity:_ Similarly, it is an immediate inference that _Some
authors are vain_, if it be granted that _All authors are vain_.

An Immediate Inference may seem to be little else than a verbal
transformation; some Logicians dispute its claims to be called an
inference at all, on the ground that it is identical with the pretended
evidence. If we attend to the meaning, say they, an immediate inference
does not really express any new judgment; the fact expressed by it is
either the same as its evidence, or is even less significant. If from
_No men are gods_ we prove that _No gods are men_, this is nugatory; if
we prove from it that _Some men are not gods_, this is to emasculate the
sense, to waste valuable information, to lose the commanding sweep of
our universal proposition.

Still, in Logic, it is often found that an immediate inference expresses
our knowledge in a more convenient form than that of the evidentiary
proposition, as will appear in the chapter on Syllogisms and elsewhere.
And by transforming an universal into a particular proposition, as _No
men are gods_, therefore, _Some men are not gods_,--we get a statement
which, though weaker, is far more easily proved; since a single instance
suffices. Moreover, by drawing all possible immediate inferences from a
given proposition, we see it in all its aspects, and learn all that is
implied in it.

A Mediate Inference, on the other hand, depends for its evidence upon a
plurality of other propositions (two or more) which are connected
together on logical principles. If we argue--

No men are gods;
Alexander the Great is a man;
.'. Alexander the Great is not a god:

this is a Mediate Inference. The evidence consists of two propositions
connected by the term 'man,' which is