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Now, whether we fix our contemplation upon this imaginary picture, or call to mind the generalizations we have had occasion to make from former ocular observation, we learn by the evidence of experience, that a line which, after diverging from another straight line, begins to approach to it, produces the impression on our senses which we describe by the expression, “a bent line,” not by the expression, “a straight line.”
Whether these were consciously formulated rules or merely generalizations from his conduct, they state correctly the principles of his action, and exhibit clearly in one most important sphere the unlimited power established by the Norman Conquest. To this year, 1070, in which was begun the reformation of the Church, was assigned at a later time another work of constitutional interest.
The Segregation and Organization of Values. It is of course possible to classify in a general way the various valuable phases of life. But it is a great mistake to regard these values as ultimate ends to which the concrete satisfactions of experience are subordinate. They are nothing but generalizations, more or less adequate, of concrete goods.
"Oh!" said Sylvia, relieved to know that the odd look concealed no criticism, "I didn't know that anybody nowadays made such silly Victorian generalizations about woman's cattiness, anybody under old Mr. Sommerville's age, that is. And anyhow, Judith's my sister."
Generalizations about the tastes and interests of the age are so easy that all except the most wary fall into them, and the world is full of off-hand opinions touching the condition of society and the state of the world, which are far more conspicuous for courage than for discretion.
The Marquis of Salisbury, in an interval between two terms of service as Premier of England, presided over the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and delivered an address showing a wide and careful study of the generalizations of modern science. In France, also, one great glory of the nation is felt to be the works of its scientific and learned men of the past and present.
If those were the generalizations of a tired business man after a heavy dinner and a big cigar, they would still seem rather muddled and useless.
It is just as easy to suppose that we could have had our magnetic telegraphs, and daguerreotypes, and our new Materia Medica, and all the new inventions of modern science for man's relief, if the terms which were simple terms in the vocabulary of Aristotle and Pliny, had never been tested with the edge of the New Machine, and divided with its divine fire, if they had not ceased to be in the schools at least elementary; it is just as easy to suppose this, as it is to suppose that the true and nobler ends of science can ever be attained, so long as the powers that are actual in our human life, which are still at large in all their blind instinctive demoniacal strength there, which still go abroad free-footed, unfettered of science there, while we chain the lightning, and send it on our errands, so long as these still slip through the ring of our airy 'words, still riot in the freedom of our large generalizations, our sublime abstractions, so long as a mere human word-ology is suffered to remain here, clogging all with its deadly impotence, keeping out the true generalizations with their grappling-hooks on the particulars, the creative word of art which man learns from the creating wisdom, the word to which rude nature bows anew, the word which is Power.
Such common ideas will be deep-seated and not obvious, for it needs but little first-hand acquaintance with Asia to learn that all generalizations about the spirit of the East require careful testing and that such words as Asiatic or oriental do not connote one type of mind.
Hence, answering to this supposed, but far from proven, universality of Evolution as a fact, we have a certain philosophy of Evolution which takes us out of the sphere of facts into that of hypotheses and generalizations, and tries to give meaning and unity to the positive information that physical science has collected and classified; to finish, as it were, the suggested curves; to fill up the lacunae of observation; to extend to the whole world what is known of the part; and perhaps to erect into a cause what is only an orderly statement of facts.
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