ofs, with all circumstances on both sides, nothing is so unfit to
assist the mind in that as syllogism; which running away with one
assumed probability, or one topical argument, pursues that till it has
led the mind quite out of sight of the thing under consideration; and,
forcing it upon some remote difficulty, holds it fast there; entangled
perhaps, and, as it were, manacled, in the chain of syllogisms, without
allowing it the liberty, much less affording it the helps, requisite to
show on which side, all things considered, is the greater probability.

6. Serves not to increase our Knowledge, but to fence with the Knowledge
we suppose we have.

But let it help us (as perhaps may be said) in convincing men of their
errors and mistakes: (and yet I would fain see the man that was forced
out of his opinion by dint of syllogism,) yet still it fails our reason
in that part, which, if not its highest perfection, is yet certainly its
hardest task, and that which we most need its help in; and that is
THE FINDING OUT OF PROOFS, AND MAKING NEW DISCOVERIES. The rules of
syllogism serve not to furnish the mind with those intermediate ideas
that may show the connexion of remote ones. This way of reasoning
discovers no new proofs, but is the art of marshalling and ranging the
old ones we have already. The forty-seventh proposition of the first
book of Euclid is very true; but the discovery of it, I think, not owing
to any rules of common logic. A man knows first and then he is able to
prove syllogistically. So that syllogism comes after knowledge, and then
a man has little or no need of it. But it is chiefly by the finding out
those ideas that show the connexion of distant ones, that our stock of
knowledge is increased, and that useful arts and sciences are advanced.
Syllogism, at best, is but the art of fencing with the little knowledge
we have, without making any addition to it. And if a man should employ
his reason all this way, he will not do much otherwise than he who,
having got some iron out of the bowels of the earth, should have it
beaten up all into swords, and put it into his servants' hands to fence
with and bang one another. Had the King of Spain employed the hands of
his people, and his Spanish iron so, he had brought to light but little
of that treasure that lay so long hid in the dark entrails of America.
And I am apt to think that he who shall employ all the force of his
reason only in brandishing of syllogisms, w