said that he owed much to his predecessors,--that he borrowed from
Whewell much of his classification, from Brown the chief lines of his
theory of causation, from Sir John Herschel the main principles of the
inductive methods. Those who think this a disparagement of his work
must have very little conception of the mass of original thought that
still remains to Mr. Mill's credit, the great critical power that
could gather valuable truths from so many discordant sources, and the
wonderful synthetic ability required to weld these and his own
contributions into one organic whole.

When Mr. Mill commenced his labors, the only logic recognized was the
syllogistic. Reasoning consisted solely, according to the then
dominant school, in deducing from general propositions other
propositions less general. It was even asserted confidently, that
nothing more was to be expected,--that an inductive logic was
impossible. This conception of logical science necessitated some
general propositions to start with; and these general propositions
being _ex hypothesi_ incapable of being proved from other
propositions, it followed, that, if they were known to us at all, they
must be original data of consciousness. Here was a perfect paradise of
question begging. The ultimate major premise in every argument being
assumed, it could of course be fashioned according to the particular
conclusion it was called in to prove. Thus an 'artificial ignorance,'
as Locke calls it, was produced, which had the effect of sanctifying
prejudice by recognizing so-called necessities of thought as the only
bases of reasoning. It is true, that outside of the logic of the
schools great advances had been made in the rules of scientific
investigation; but these rules were not only imperfect in themselves,
but their connection with the law of causation was but imperfectly
realized, and their true relation to syllogism hardly dreamt of.

Mr. Mill altered all this. He demonstrated that the general type of
reasoning is neither from generals to particulars, nor from
particulars to generals, but from particulars to particulars. "If from
our experience of John, Thomas, &c., who once were living, but are now
dead, we are entitled to conclude that all human beings are mortal, we
might surely, without any logical inconsequence, have concluded at
once from those instances, that the Duke of Wellington is mortal. The
mortality of John, Thomas, and others is, after all, the whole
e