Third Station
The negative stance regarding syllogisms and assent-propositions, embodied in their claim:
“None of the assent-propositions is known except through syllogism.”

Section
Concerning syllogism, the discussion likewise falls into two stations.

First Station – the Negative

Restricting all knowledge to syllogism is a claim made without knowledge.

Their declaration, “None of the assent-propositions is known except through syllogism,” whose figure and matter they have painstakingly set forth, is a negative, exclusionary proposition that is not self-evident, and for which they have produced no proof whatsoever. They are therefore asserting what they have not established; indeed, they are speaking without knowledge. For, on their own principles, it is impossible to know such a sweeping negation. How, then, did they ascertain that no human being can grasp any assent-proposition that is not, in their view, self-evident, except by means of the universal logical syllogism whose figure and matter they describe?

The distinction between what is self-evident and what is inferential is purely relative.

Secondly, we say: they admit—indeed, they must—that among the judgements there are some that are self-evident and others that are inferential, and that it is impossible for all of them to be inferential, since the inferential depends upon the self-evident. Given this, the line between the self-evident and the inferential is, in the end, only a matter of relation and perspective.