INTELLECTUAL ANTECEDENTS OF SCIENCE 253

Referring again to the character of this class of beasts,

he might further exclaim, "This fish-like thing, when alive,

must, as being really a beast, have had warm blood."

His conclusion would have been a perfectly correct one,

and in this way his inferences would really have supplied

him with knowledge which he certainly did not possess

before.

So great, indeed, is the difference between explicit and

implicit knowledge, that the latter may not deserve to be

called "knowledge" at all. Probably there is no opponent

or derider of the syllogism who will venture to affirm that

a student who has learned, and recollects, the axioms and

definitions of Euclid, can, by that fact alone, have obtained

such a real knowledge of all the geometrical truths the work

contains, that he will fully understand all its propositions

and theorems without having to study them. Yet all the

propositions, etc., of Euclid are implicitly contained in the

definitions and axioms. Nevertheless, in spite of that, the

student will have to study much and go through many

processes of inference, by which he may be enabled to

recognize these implicit truths explicitly, before he can

truly be said to have any real knowledge of them.

Of course, in the very rare instances in which the major

premiss expresses a truth which has been arrived at by an

examination of every instance referred to in it a " complete

induction " there is nothing implicit.

Thus, if we knew with absolute certainty that every man,

woman, and child in some Indian village was a leper,

then to say that a man came from that village would be

equivalent to saying explicitly that he was a leper. In

such a case there would be no evolution of implicit into

explicit truth there would be no process of inference,

and the word "therefore" would, if used, be quite out of

place.

Referring again to the character of this class of beasts,

he might further exclaim, "This fish-like thing, when alive,

must, as being really a beast, have had warm blood."

His conclusion would have been a perfectly correct one,

and in this way his inferences would really have supplied

him with knowledge which he certainly did not possess

before.

So great, indeed, is the difference between explicit and

implicit knowledge, that the latter may not deserve to be

called "knowledge" at all. Probably there is no opponent

or derider of the syllogism who will venture to affirm that

a student who has learned, and recollects, the axioms and

definitions of Euclid, can, by that fact alone, have obtained

such a real knowledge of all the geometrical truths the work

contains, that he will fully understand all its propositions

and theorems without having to study them. Yet all the

propositions, etc., of Euclid are implicitly contained in the

definitions and axioms. Nevertheless, in spite of that, the

student will have to study much and go through many

processes of inference, by which he may be enabled to

recognize these implicit truths explicitly, before he can

truly be said to have any real knowledge of them.

Of course, in the very rare instances in which the major

premiss expresses a truth which has been arrived at by an

examination of every instance referred to in it a " complete

induction " there is nothing implicit.

Thus, if we knew with absolute certainty that every man,

woman, and child in some Indian village was a leper,

then to say that a man came from that village would be

equivalent to saying explicitly that he was a leper. In

such a case there would be no evolution of implicit into

explicit truth there would be no process of inference,

and the word "therefore" would, if used, be quite out of

place.