ABSTRACT
It is obvious that two or more propositions involving entirely different terms cannot between them imply anything more than the sum of their separate implications. But where two propositions have a term in common, then something may be inferrible from the two together which could not be inferred from either separately, and which is not merely the sum of their separate implications. In the foregoing account of mediate inference with singular middle terms the premises were all such as expressed relations of identity and difference. In the case of mediate inference involving transitive relations what usually happens is that the premises attest that the major term and the minor term are each related in the same kind of way to the same middle term, and the conclusion states that the same relationship therefore holds good between the major and minor terms themselves.
