220 THE PSYCHICAL KINSHIP 



the same kind of generalisations exactly as are 

 made by men everywhere in their daily lives. And 

 the common-sense inferences made by ordinary 

 people in their every- day affairs are precisely the 

 same processes of reasoning as those used by 

 scientists and philosophers. Many people, like 

 the character in Moliere's plays who was sur- 

 prised and delighted to learn that he had been 

 talking prose all his life, are surprised on hearing 

 for the first time that they use induction and 

 deduction every hour almost of their waking lives. 

 They imagine that philosophers must have some 

 secret and superior way of acquiring their con- 

 clusions, different from what ordinary mortals 

 have. ' But there is no more difference,' says 

 Huxley, 'between the mental operations of a man 

 of science and those of an ordinary person than 

 there is between the operations and methods 

 of a grocer weighing out his goods in common 

 scales and the operations of a chemist in perform- 

 ing a difficult and complex analysis by means 

 of his balance and finely graduated weights. It 

 is not that the scales in the one case and the 

 balances in the other differ in the principles of 

 their construction or manner of working; but 

 the beam of the one is set on an infinitely finer 

 axis than the other, and, of course, turns by 

 the addition of a much smaller weight ' (16). 

 And the difference in mental method between 

 the man of learning and the ordinary man or 

 woman is the same as the difference between 

 mature men and children and between men 



