Mill attacks the problem from the opposite side. It subordinates
syllogism to induction, the technical to the real; it divests the major
premiss of its illusory pretence to be itself the proving authority, or
even any real and essential part of the proof--and acknowledges it
merely as a valuable precautionary test and security for avoiding
mistake in the process of proving. Taking Mr Mill's 'System of Logic' as
a whole, it is one of the books by which we believe ourselves to have
most profited. The principles of it are constantly present to our mind
when engaged in investigations of evidence, whether scientific or
historical.

Concerned as we are here with Mr Mill only as a logician and
philosopher, we feel precluded from adverting to his works on other
topics--even to his 'Elements of Political Economy,' by which he is
probably more widely known than by anything else. Of the many
obligations which Political Economy owes to him, one only can be noticed
consistent with the scope of the present article: the care which he has
taken--he alone, or at least, he more explicitly and formally than any
other expositor--to set forth the general position of that science in
the aggregate field of scientific research; its relation to sociology as
a whole, or to other fractions thereof, how far derivative or
co-ordinate; what are its fundamental postulates or hypotheses, with
what limits the logical methods of induction and deduction are
applicable to it, and how far its conclusions may be relied on as
approximations to truth. All these points will be found instructively
handled in the Sixth Book of Mr Mill's 'System of Logic,' as well as in
his smaller and less known work, 'Essays on Some Unsettled Questions in
Political Economy.' We find him, while methodizing and illustrating the
data of the special science, uniformly keeping in view its relation to
philosophy as a whole.