ou will pay the
penalty for it soon." Generally he would be right. However, if this
were put into a syllogism, it would read as follows: All persons who
do wrong pay the penalty soon. You are such a person. Therefore, etc.
Admitting the son is breaking the law, the fact is that the major
premise is not always true, and the conclusion holds the weakness of
the weak premise. Again, supposing everybody accepted the general
truth, "All unrepentant sinners will be punished." The minister might
then say to a young man, "You will certainly be punished, because all
unrepentant sinners will be punished." The young man might deny the
suppressed minor premise, which is, "You are an unrepentant sinner."
Both premises must be true if they prove anything. The conclusion
contains the weakness of either premise. In both of these examples
note that the mistake is in the premise which does not appear. In an
enthymeme, great care should be taken with the suppressed premise. Be
sure it is true when you use this form of argument, and be sure to
look for it and state it in full when examining another's argument. It
is a common way of hiding a weak point to cover it in the suppressed
premise of an enthymeme.

Method of Induction.

Induction, which proceeds directly opposite to the method of
deduction, is the method by which all our ultimate knowledge has been
obtained. By observing individual instances man has gathered a great
store of general truths. There was a time when the first man would not
have been justified in saying, "The sun will rise in the east
to-morrow." The general law had not been established. To-day it is
practically certain that the sun will rise in the east to-morrow
morning, because it has done so for thousands of years; the large
number of instances establishes the general truth. Yet there may come
a day when it will rise in the south, or not rise at all. Until every
case has been tried and found to conform to the law, theoretically man
cannot be absolutely certain of any general truth. There may come an
exception to the general rule that all men must die. So far, however,
there is no experience to justify any man in hoping to escape death.
"As sure as death" means in practice absolutely sure, though this is
not what is called a perfect induction; that is, an induction in which
every possible case has been included. "All the other States are
smaller than Texas" is a perfect induction, but it forms no basis for
argum