SECTION 13. GENERALISATION OR EXTENSION. 103 



sopher who knows much of nature, and for the most part 

 reasons well in matters of human science ; and that book should 

 be esteemed well written, which has more of good sense in it 

 than it has of impertinence." (Logic, p. 178.) And in the 

 Preface to La Rochefoucauld's famous Reflections, we read: 

 "Common conversation teaches us that even where general 

 expressions are used, we take them in a limited sense, with 

 such and such restrictions. ... As, for example, when we hear 

 a man say, 'All Paris went to meet the king', or 'All the 

 court was at the play', every one knows that it only signifies 

 the greater part." Similarly there is value in an indefinife 

 generalised statement, as when it is contended that "the over- 

 whelming majority of organisms have a bilaterally symmetrical 

 structure". (J. Loeb, Forced Movements, 1918, p. 13.) 



40. Besides, as we have seen ( 7), the Universe is as a 

 totality stable if brief periods are considered, and all but the 

 scientifically trained, misled by this, tend, therefore, to gene- 

 ralise where wiser men prudently discriminate. "Suffering 

 ennobles", "Suffering degrades"; "By answering injury with 

 kindness, we touch others' hearts", "By answering injury with 

 kindness, we invite and create callousness"; "Some persons 

 defy their environment, therefore environment is of no con- 

 sequence in morals", "Some persons are crushed by their en- 

 vironment, therefore environment is of infinite significance in 

 morals"; "Out of sight, out of mind", "Absence makes the 

 heart grow fonder"; "Religion (health, intellect, sympathy, 

 resoluteness) is everything in morality"; "There is a universal 

 conscience", "The conscience varies with each people and 

 age"; "Self-reliance is everything", "Social devotion is every- 

 thing"; and a hundred other popular but contradictory gene- 

 ralisations illustrate the fact that men are almost incurably 

 addicted to building broad generalisations on slender experience. 1 



Nor is precipitancy by any means confined to the masses. 

 . Not a few educationists, for example, are fond of generalising. 

 Having perceived certain advantages accruing from the child 

 being interested in his school work, interest is forthwith con- 

 ceived as the be-all and end-all of education. Likewise, self- 

 dependence, collaboration, games, concrete study, science teach- 

 ing, the cultivation of the aesthetic sense, physical culture, manual 

 training, classics, religious lessons, vocational preparation, and 

 diverse other forms of education, are each in succession, and 

 on equally inadequate grounds, proclaimed to possess the power 

 of revolutionising the spiritual nature of the child. So, too, 

 arguing from a caricature of the earlier stages of man's history 

 and from imperfect observation of child life, it has been widely 

 maintained that the child tends to repeat the history of man 



1 <4 Generalisation is the great prerogative of the intellect, but it is a power 

 only to be exercised safely with much caution and after long training." 

 <.l<-vons, Principles of Science, p. 626.) 



