With regard to the universal syllogism, either analogy is what brings it about, or at the very least it cannot be obtained without analogy; in either case, how could the syllogism by itself be stronger than analogy?
They usually illustrate universals with examples such as: “The whole is greater than the part,” “Contradictories cannot both be true, nor can they both be false,” “Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another,” and the like. Yet for every one of these universals, a host of external instances is already known. Whenever one wishes to verify such a universal in the mind, one cites a particular instance, shows that no relevant difference exists between it and the others—or establishes the common factor—and only then does the intellect judge that the ruling applies to the shared universal. This is, in fact, the very essence of analogical inference.
Even if we were to grant that a universal syllogism stands in no need of analogy, and that knowledge of universal propositions does not in any way depend on knowledge of any particular, it would still be untenable to claim that knowing the universal while also knowing that some of its external instances exist is somehow inferior to knowing it without reference to any particular. Knowledge of the particular only perfects one’s knowledge of the universal. It follows that the form of reasoning they reject is actually more complete than the form they uphold.
Their criticisms of analogical inference originate with their later adherents. Be aware that in metaphysical—and even in natural—logic they altered some of what Aristotle had said, and what they added in the metaphysical domain is better than Aristotle’s own words. I have examined both sets of writings and have found Aristotle and his followers in matters of divinity to be far more ignorant than the Jews and Christians—by a wide margin. In the natural sciences most of his discourse is sound, and in logic his words are better than his words on theology.
Moreover, the disparagement of analogical inference and the arguments advanced against it stem from their late-coming scholars, who noticed that the jurists employ analogy frequently. Now, the jurists do use it often in matters that yield only probability, but in those cases the conjecture arises from the subject-matter, not from the form of the argument. Were the same subject-matter cast in the form of a universal syllogism, it would still yield nothing but conjecture. These thinkers, however, imagined that the weakness lay in the form, so they declared their own syllogistic form to yield certainty and relegated the jurists’ syllogism to mere conjecture.