SECTION 23 GENERALISATION. 335 



and magnetism are one, or that man is primarily adapted for 

 the specio-culturally determined life, is to state almost nothing, 

 if no more be stated. And this is manifest in minor matters. 

 To generalise, for example, the assertion "Consult Baedeker in 

 regard to Florence", to "Consult always something when in 

 doubt", is practically a waste of mental force, unless we de- 

 finitely expand the assertion into something like this (somewhat 

 exaggerated) form : " Consult libraries, newspaper reading rooms, 

 dictionaries, encyclopedias, atlases, charts, text-books, books of 

 statistics, year-books, guide-books, address-books, books generally 

 (prefaces, contents, summaries, conclusions, and indexes), biblio- 

 graphies, catalogues, lists, museums, galleries, zoological and 

 botanical gardens, information bureaus, societies or persons in- 

 terested in the matter under consideration, guides, experts, 

 etc., etc.; and, in fact, consult whenever in doubt". 



Similarly, if in our lengthy section relating to observation, 

 we had only dilated on the general virtue of observation and 

 had offered a miscellany of haphazard illustrations, we should 

 have fallen wide of the scientific mark. The real and far- 

 reaching value of observation is created by the many rules 

 which control the process: to observe exhaustively, minutely, 

 etc., etc. Else we have observations which are likely to prove 

 worthless. Fulness is of the essence here. Fulness in a gene- 

 ralisation, the provision of a number of particulars, should be 

 therefore habitually aimed at, for fulness alone endows it with 

 meaning and significance, forming as it also does the neces- 

 sary stimulus and point of departure for deductive reasoning. 

 Darwin's Origin of Species and Newton's Principia, or, even 

 better still, Aristotle's works, present illustrations of what is 

 signified by fulness in detail. 



170. (g) RATIONAL AND RELEVANT GENERALISA- 

 TIONS. Generalisations should, moreover, be rational. An 

 enquiry is commonly undertaken for the purpose of elucidating a 

 particular subject matter. In attempting this there may be, and 

 should be, fulness of statements and of conclusions to a certain de- 

 gree ; but if absolute fulness be the goal, the enquiry degenerates 

 into a general investigation having no special end in view. To 

 prove exhaustively that man is fitted for the specio-culturally 

 determined state, and to draw up some of the principal impli- 

 cations, is right and proper; but to endeavour, having regard 

 to the peculiar subject of the enquiry, to render explicit all 

 that is implicit, and to pursue each of the implications into the 

 minutest particularity, that is, to write a complete science of 

 culture, including all the connected sciences, would be irrational. 

 Enquiries differ, of course, in intension and extension, and an 

 exhaustive enquiry will comprise much ; yet he who in connec- 

 tion with an investigation relating to the nature of protoplasm, 

 would write a compendium of astronomy, physics, botany, and 

 zoology, would act contrary to science and to modern common 



