of this argument first. In every reasoning, according to Mr. Spencer, the assumption of the postulate is renewed at every step. At each inference we judge that the conclusion follows from the premises, our sole warrant for that judgment being that we can not conceive it not to follow. Consequently if the postulate is fallible, the conclusions of reasoning are more vitiated by that uncertainty than direct intuitions; and the disproportion is greater, the more numerous the steps of the argument.
To test this doctrine, let us first suppose an argument consisting only of a single step, which would be represented by one syllogism. This argument does rest on an assumption, and we have seen in the preceding chapters what the assumption is. It is, that whatever has a mark, has what it is a mark of. The evidence of this axiom I shall not consider at present;2 [pg 198] let us suppose it (with Mr. Spencer) to be the inconceivableness of its reverse.
Let us now add a second step to the argument: we require, what? Another assumption? No: the same assumption a second time; and so on to a third, and a fourth. I confess I do not see how, on Mr. Spencer’s own principles, the repetition of the assumption at all weakens the force of the argument. If it were necessary the second time to assume some other axiom, the argument would no doubt be weakened, since it would be necessary to its validity that both axioms should be true, and it might happen that one was true and not the other: making two chances of error instead of one. But since it is the same axiom, if it is true once it is true every time; and if the argument, being of a hundred links, assumed the axiom a hundred times, these hundred assumptions would make but one chance of error among them all. It is satisfactory that we are not obliged to suppose the deductions of pure mathematics to be among the most uncertain of argumentative processes, which on Mr. Spencer’s theory they could hardly fail to be, since they are the longest. But the number of steps in an argument does not subtract from its reliableness, if no new premises, of an uncertain character, are taken up by the way.3