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"I daresay what you heard was true," retorted Miss Bennett, "but it does not follow that they are all alike." Without perceiving clearly the extent of the fallacy, she felt called upon to oppose the generalisations of a superficial mind. So they passed out of sight of Trenholme's house. Inside he sat at his desk, plunged again in the work of writing business letters.
The superseding of rote-learnt lessons by lessons orally and experimentally given, like those of the field and play-ground, shows this. The disuse of rule-teaching, and the adoption of teaching by principles that is, the leaving of generalisations until there are particulars to base them on show this. The system of object-lessons shows this.
And now we will leave generalisations on West African rivers and go into particulars regarding one little known in England, and called by its owners, the French, the greatest strictly equatorial river in the world the Ogowe.
It is not that the generalisations of the evolutionary sociologists with regard to man in the mass, or societies, are untrue philosophically. Philosophically they are of the utmost moment. It is that they have no bearing on the problems of contemporary life, and that they miss out the one factor by which they are brought into connection with it.
The ground of our belief in axioms is a disputed point, and one which, through the belief arising too early to be traced by the believer's own recollection, or by other persons' observation, cannot be settled by reference to actual dates. The axioms are really only generalisations from experience. Dr. Whewell, however, and others think that, though suggested, they are not proved by experience, and that their truth is recognised
But the value of truths is often great, in proportion as their generality is wide. Remote as they seem from practical application, the highest generalisations are not unfrequently the most potent in their effects, in virtue of their influence on all those subordinate generalisations which regulate practice. And it must be so here.
The interpretation forms here again, as on the level of natural science, syntheses and generalisations larger than any one individual. These are the resultants of mind with mind and will with will. When human beings come into contact with each other, there originates a state of things in which something is thought and done.
There is a certain type of mind which constitutionally ignores and overlooks little things, and habitually moves among large generalisations. Of such minds we may well find a type in Bacon, who so often gave James I. occasion to remark jocularly in the Council Chamber of his Lord Chancellor, De minimis non curat lex.
The old Manchester economists are generally attacked for being too gross and material. Shaw really attacks them for not being gross or material enough. He thinks that they hide themselves behind long words, remote hypotheses or unreal generalisations.
He was on his guard against generalisations which might be hasty; but he had arrived at two or three that were of value to a gentleman lately admitted to the New York bar and looking out for clients. One of them was to the effect that the simplest division it is possible to make of the human race is into the people who take things hard and the people who take them easy.
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