SECTION 23.-GENERALISATION. 331 



strive to express the fact in the most comprehensive formula 

 for the specific purpose mentioned. This would be perhaps 

 " Wherever matters of degree (more generally stated, wherever 

 relations) are involved, there the influence of the degree (or 

 relation) should be allowed for or examined". Valuable as 

 such a generalisation may be for directive and future needs, 

 its bare statement would probably not elucidate or illuminate 

 the problem we strive to grasp. It would, however, compel us 

 to continue generalising our experience and our tentative ex- 

 tensions until the relevant limit to the enquiry is reached. For 

 instance, we should begin by fixing on the conspicuous fact 

 that the thinner or thicker the cylindrical stream of hot water, 

 the less or more shall we feel as hot the water falling on the 

 hand. We should, of course, provisionally and slowly gene- 

 ralise the word hand to any part of the body and to any 

 object, the word water to any substance, the word hot to any 

 temperature and to all the senses and all forces, until we 

 reached the most comprehensive generalisation. 



Or, noting that a shadow is explained as a merely privative 

 fact the relative absence of illumination in a relatively lighted 

 locality we grope and find the widest term Obstruction under 

 which it can be profitably subsumed. We may then state 

 " Every where allow for partial or complete obstruction as a 

 possible explanation of a phenomenon". Here we meet with 

 a much obscurer statement than the preceding one one which, 

 unexpanded, suggests both too little and too much. 



Or, consider the case of the notice-board analysed in 87, 

 where the most comprehensive statement arrived at is virtually : 

 "Make a statement wherever advisable". Exceedingly helpful 

 as such a proposition might be for the specific object of 

 guidance in the active process of generalising, its bare mention 

 might be merely irritating or amusing, though a concrete 

 analysis of the variety of statements, places, and circumstances 

 methodically exploited might lead us back to reality. Conced- 

 ing, however, that extremely comprehensive statements may be 

 sometimes also luminous or may be concerned with a subject 

 many details of which are well known, such statements would 

 prove useful both for generalising and deductive ends. Indeed, 

 with the progress of knowledge, statements of this character 

 will become more and more intelligible and therefore more 

 and more valuable per se. They would constitute the most 

 general laws of nature and of life. 



A scientific methodology would make the search for large 

 generalisations an invariable attribute of the scientific worker ; 

 unfortunately even among the vanguard of scientific thinkers 

 there is often a general lack of the habit of comprehensive 

 generalising. Why should not Sadi Carnot have definitely pro- 

 posed the law of the conservation of energy? Why should 

 not the discovery of the nature of itch have been forthwith 



