Science in Public Affairs 



The popular distinction between State and 

 Church may be regarded as a particular case of 

 the wider popular distinction between the Law 

 and the Gospel ; and this again is a particular 

 case of the larger scientific generalisation of 

 Temporal and Spiritual Powers. There are, of 

 course, practical advantages which prompt the 

 popular mind to extend its widening circles of 

 general concepts, which again are further refined 

 and developed by science. The general concept 

 is to a mere collection of facts what regimenta- 

 tion is to a mob of men. It enables one to neglect 

 individual eccentricities and predict the collective 

 behaviour of the group, whether the group con- 

 sists of items called facts or items called men. 

 The inducement to widen the generalisation is, 

 that the larger its scope the broader are the limits 

 of prediction. The assumption made is that the 

 process of generalisation is a gradual one, and 

 that the steps from the concrete facts up to the 

 largest generalisation are all traceable without a 

 break. In other words, a generalisation must be 

 of a kind which in science is called verifiable 

 that is to say, the prediction based upon it must 

 refer to a course of future events, which must 

 either happen or not happen at a given place and 

 within a given and finite time. And this proviso 

 of verifiability gives a definiteness and fixity to 

 scientific generalisations, which is often absent 

 from those alike of the popular mind or of the 

 poetic imagination. 



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