 The canonical syllogism, treated as an inference, is that whereby one who knows the truth of its premisses may also come to know the truth of its conclusion. While the truth of a particular statement is thought to be known either through perception or through inference, how is the truth of a universal statement, such as the major premiss of a canonical syllogism, known? To know its truth would seem to require that one know of each thing which has H, whether or not it also has S. Yet if one knew that, one would already know by perception the canonical syllogism’s conclusion. As a result, inference would be a superfluous means of knowledge.