connexion of all these, viz. south-west wind, and clouds, rain, wetting, taking cold, relapse, and danger of death, without tying them together in those artificial and cumbersome fetters of several syllogisms, that clog and hinder the mind, which proceeds from one part to another quicker and clearer without them:  and the probability which she easily perceives in things thus in their native state would be quite lost, if this argument were managed learnedly, and proposed in mode and figure.  For it very often confounds the connexion; and, I think, every one will perceive in mathematical demonstrations, that the knowledge gained thereby comes shortest and clearest without syllogism.

Secondly, Because though syllogism serves to show the force or fallacy of an argument, made use of in the usual way of discoursing, by supplying the absent proposition, and so, setting it before the view in a clear light; yet it no less engages the mind in the perplexity of obscure, equivocal, and fallacious terms, wherewith this artificial way of reasoning always abounds:  it being adapted more to the attaining of victory in dispute than the discovery and confirmation of truth in fair enquiries.

5.  Syllogism helps little in Demonstration, less in Probability.

But however it be in knowledge, I think I may truly say, it is of far less, or no use at all in probabilities.  For the assent there being to be determined by the preponderancy, after due weighing of all the proofs, 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