SECTION 23 GENERALISATION. 355 



179. (B) PARALLEL AND OTHER INSTANCES. If the 

 "opposite", as we shall see in the next Conclusion, may show 

 that the contrary of the proposition holds good, and if the 

 Sub-Conclusion relating to degree may in a more elastic way 

 indefinitely narrow or extend the limits of a proposition, the 

 Sub-Conclusion pertaining to parallel cases of facts endeavours 

 to extend an assertion to classes of facts which do not at first 

 sight appear to be closely filiated. For instance, by the Sub- 

 Conclusion of degree-determination or that of opposite instances, 

 the bad man may be proved to possess a conscience which 

 encourages him to commit wrong, and by the present Sub- 

 Conclusion it may be demonstrated that there is a faculty 

 within certain men which informs them not merely of what is 

 right or wrong, but what is inexpensive, what is pleasant, or 

 what is correct. Summing up the conclusions concerning this 

 faculty, we may advance the generalisation that conscience as 

 such implies "familiar activity", and that whatever class of 

 facts is familiar to an individual gives rise to a special con- 

 science. Equally so with such terms as ought, duty, respon- 

 sibility, praise and blame, merit and demerit, good and bad: 

 these may each be shown to apply outside of what is strictly 

 called the realm of ethics. The expression "You ought to do 

 this", for instance, which appears to mean "If you are a certain 

 kind of person (a good man, a bad man, an artist, a man of wit, 

 a physicist), you will do this", may be applied equally and is 

 so applied, as daily experience illustrates to moral, immoral, 

 and non-moral actions. Indeed, where doubt is excluded, the 

 word "ought" is inapplicable. To the good man we say "We 

 know you respect your mother", and to the bad man "We know 

 you do not respect your mother". To the former it would be 

 an insult to say "You ought to respect your mother", and to the 

 latter the word " ought " would lack all meaning on the moral plane. 



The extension of the law that heat transforms work, but is 

 not lost, into the general law of the conservation of energy, 

 or that heat, light, and electricity, or various senses, have im- 

 portant properties in common, offer further apposite illustrations. 

 Finally, an application of this Sub-Conclusion is to be discerned 

 in Madame Montessori's educational method. Observing that 

 she could prepare defective children so well scholastically that 

 they equalled average children of the same age in their in- 

 tellectual attainments, she reasoned that the application. of the 

 same methods, appropriately modified for average children, 

 would correspondingly raise the educative capacity of the latter. 

 This Sub-Conclusion refers to lateral rather than to vertical 

 generalisations, to extending a proposition to more or less nearly 

 related facts which have not been considered as closely related 

 in respect of the particular item or items; 1 indeed, the Sub- 



1 Huxley's famous essay on "The Relation of Man to the Lower Animals" 

 confines itself to a line of argument in conformity with this Conclusion. 



23* 



