"Generalization" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some other examples less extreme than those quoted, but the generalization was no doubt too broad and presented in some respects an erroneous conclusion. The only mode of getting at the number of voters was by the ballots cast at the general elections, and the relative ratio was varied ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... of Tasmania is a type of the Australian world. The events recorded in these volumes represent the policy, modified slightly, which has everywhere prevailed. The author has however rarely attempted generalization, and has represented every fact in its independent colors. Thus an evil pursued to its source might have been avoidable by greater forethought and care, or it may have been the inevitable issue of a system upon the whole beneficial ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... vexatious interruptions. His judgment was as sound as his memory was retentive; it was almost infallible,—no one was ever known to have been misled by it. He had a remarkable analytical power, and also the power of generalization. He was a very learned man, and his Commentaries are among the most useful and valued of his writings, showing both learning and judgment; his exegetical works have scarcely been improved. He had no sceptical or rationalistic tendencies, and therefore ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... of them indicate that even in those days of intense suffering Lanier impressed her favorably. "It was refreshing," she says, "to listen to a professor of literature who was something more than a 'raconteur' and something different from a bibliophile, who had, indeed, risen to the level of generalization and employed the method of a philosopher. . . . [His] face [was] very pale and delicate, with finely chiseled features, dark, clustering hair, parted in the middle, and beard after the manner of the Italian school ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... by which we share each others' burdens, is to do as we would be done by. It is not a scientific principle, and does not admit of such generalization or interpretation that A can tell B what this law enjoins on B to do. Hence the relations of sympathy and sentiment are essentially limited to two persons only, and they cannot be made a basis for the relations of groups of persons, ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... eager to credit him with an anticipation of modern views on the strength of this definition, have overlooked the fact that it is incapable of explaining a single process, includes none of the ascertained laws of phenomena, and is itself an example of the illicit generalization which Bacon elsewhere condemns. It was with some justification, therefore, that Harvey, who knew what science was, and knew better than most men how discoveries were made, said of him that he wrote of science ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... Efforts at generalization, however, and the systematic arrangement of natural phenomena, are seldom wholly fruitless. If false, they tend to provoke discussion—to lead to active thought and useful research. A solitary truth, though new and useful, rarely obtains higher distinction than to be quietly ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... horses. The fame of Cairns had travelled before him to Rosanna, but none had been prepared for a figure so weird or for a countenance so forbidding and malign. His manners were equally uncouth. He shook his bent head to decline refreshment; he pointedly ignored a generalization of Hardcastle's about the crime; and when he spoke, it was in a gratuitously satirical style of ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... in Latin poetry, when the object is to generalize a remark—as not connected with one mode of time more than another. In reality, all three modes of time—past, present, future—are used (though not equally used) in all languages for this purpose of generalization. Thus,— ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... is based on certain facts which, taken in their collective capacity, mean the truth which is expressed in the formula. A higher generalization embraces those which are simpler, and unites by its expression the truths which they contain into the formula of one great truth. This process goes on, rising constantly higher and higher, the generalizations of the ascending series becoming more comprehensive, and the convergence ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... declared, who commences with the points of the highest importance, as a plan of campaign, and afterward descends to the necessary details. Tactics, on the contrary, begins with details, and ascends to combinations and generalization necessary for the formation and handling of a ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... to prevent the Jews from any chance of adopting the manners and customs of the peoples around them; and the Indians, having had similar views, naturally adopted similar means. Such then is a brief generalization of the causes which led to caste laws, which were, no doubt, carried in some instances to a ridiculous length, but which were founded in common sense, and were admirably adapted to carry into effect the opinions of the ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... this pathetically false opinion made it impossible for her to realize that jealousy is just a form of self-love, nor could she enlarge upon Edith's naive generalization and say that, if a woman suffers because she is not the equal of the rival who gains her lover's love—that is not jealousy! It is the anguish of recognizing her own defects, and it may be very noble. If she suffers because the rival is her inferior, that is not jealousy; it ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... literary instructor. The epic delight—the delight in fable and story—to which the former appeals, is a fundamental trait in human nature; it appears full grown in the child, and has small need of cultivation. But the faculty of generalization to which the critic appeals is indicative of a stage of intellectual development to which only a small minority even of our so-called cultivated public attains. It is therefore a minority of a minority which he addresses, the intellectual ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... told that a man who writes pure Spencerian can never do anything else. This, however, is a hasty generalization, put forth by a party who wrote a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... landing ladder and sipped a second mug of the white liquor, Lord became slowly aware of something else. Divested of their distinguishing uniforms, he and his crew seemed puny and ill-fed beside the natives. If physique were any index to the sophistication of a culture—but that was a ridiculous generalization! ...
— Impact • Irving E. Cox
... and the then prevailing tendencies of all the Sciences" was given on the 12th of November, 1832, at the Hotel de Ville. Judged by the impression made upon the listeners as recorded at the time, this introductory discourse must have been characterized by the same broad spirit of generalization which marked Agassiz's later teaching. Facts in his hands fell into their orderly relation as parts of a connected whole, and were never presented merely as special or isolated phenomena. From the beginning his success ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... Generalization.—It is to be noted, however, that in any such lesson, although the pupil gains through his senses a knowledge of a particular individual only, yet he may at once accept this individual as a sign, or type, of a class of objects, and can readily apply the new knowledge in ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... memory as a bright, changeful dream, varying from one pleasure to another, with an ever-shifting background of fair, foreign towns and cities, Kursaals, palaces, salons, gardens, mountains, and lakes, and quiet green nooks of country—all, as it seemed to her, with the power of generalization that seizes on the most salient points, and takes them as types of the whole, shining in sunlight that never clouded, under clear blue skies that never darkened. Madelon knew that that time had gone by for ever; and yet, in all her dreams for the future, her imagination never went beyond a repetition ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... to consider the stars from more general statistical points of view, it may therefore be of interest first to make ourselves familiar with these well-known stars, strongly emphasizing, however, the exceptional character of these stars, and carefully avoiding any generalization from the ...
— Lectures on Stellar Statistics • Carl Vilhelm Ludvig Charlier
... of knowledge, and yet it insisted that the end of education is not the bare reception and storage of information, but the formation of personal powers of attention, memory, observation, abstraction, and generalization. It was realistic in its emphatic assertion that all material whatever is received from without; it was idealistic in that final stress fell upon the formation of intellectual powers. It was objective and impersonal in its assertion that the individual cannot possess or generate ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... field and certifies to the importance of the manufacture of honest inks as necessary to the future enlightenment of society. That it has not been fully understood or even appreciated goes without saying; a proper generalization becomes possible only in the light of corroborative data and the experiences ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... me. I have no skill in the flights of speculation. I take no pleasure in the enunciation of principles. To my restricted vision, placed as I am upon the earth, isolated facts obtrude themselves with a capricious particularity which defies my powers of generalization. And that, perhaps, is the reason why I attached myself to the party to which I have the honour to belong. For it is, I think, the party which sees things as they are; as they are, that is, to mere human vision. Remenham, in his haste, has ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... faculties; but then, he recognizes, as the faculties specially active in children, those of 'sensation, perception, observation, and simple memory,' adding, for mature years, those of 'abstraction, the higher powers of reason, imagination, philosophical memory, generalization,' etc. But that any one of all these is in the true psychological sense, a faculty—save, it may be, in the single instance of imagination—we shall decidedly question; and Mr. Calkins will see by the intent of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... of man, however, the operation of this theory of limitations has not as yet been so clearly observed. The laws governing our social life are not so clearly understood as to permit of a clear generalization. Still, the opinions, pleas, and judgments of society serve as boundaries which are none the less real for being intangible. When men or women err—that is, pass out from the sphere in which they are accustomed to move—it is not as if the bird had intruded ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... of them, notably Cesalpinus, came within a very little of the discovery of the circulation; the achievements of Darwin are not to be belittled because Lamarck, Malthus or Monboddo had notions in accordance with the tenor of his great generalization of evolution among living beings. Certainly Jenner had precursors; but it was his genius and his genius alone which, putting together the various fragments of knowledge already possessed, gave us the grand but simple induction based on his own experiments that ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... judged by their effects; for this is the only means we have of knowing them to be such. And if a poison is in common use, we must embrace all the results of such use in a perfect generalization before we can decide impartially. We do not hesitate to eat peaches, though we know they owe much of their peculiar flavor to prussic acid. It is but fair to apply an equally large generalization to tobacco. Chemistry can concentrate the sapid and odorous elements ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... There are still other considerations, such as water supply, condition of circulating water, style of pump, etc., which must all necessarily have an obvious bearing upon the settlement of this question; so that generalization is somewhat out of place, the final design in all cases depending solely upon ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins
... powers have, it is true, enabled me now and then to seize on some conspicuous group of unappropriated facts, and to search out some generalization which might bring them under the reign of known law; but they are not suited to that more scientific and more laborious process of elaborate induction, which in Mr. Darwin's hands has led ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... their simplest form. For example, Plato or other equally good authority deemed substance as that which stands underneath phenomena; the most universal of universals, the ultimate, the highest in order of generalization. The ultimate essence or substance is indivisible; God is substance; God is indivisible. The divine substance is incapable of alteration or accident; all other substance is liable to alteration or accident; therefore, the divine substance ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... in infancy and childhood the individual in nature is a representative of a class, just as in describing one larch tree, you generalize a grove of them,—so it is nearly as much so in old age. The generalization is done to the poet's hand. Here you have the garrulity of age strengthened by the feelings of a long-trusted servant, whose sympathy with the mother's affections gives her privileges and rank in the household; and observe the mode of connection by accidents of time and place, and the childlike ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... need a true conception of the popular character to guide our sympathies rightly, we need it equally to check our theories, and direct us in their application. The tendency created by the splendid conquests of modern generalization, to believe that all social questions are merged in economical science, and that the relations of men to their neighbors may be settled by algebraic equations—the dream that the uncultured classes are prepared for a condition which appeals principally to ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... extravagant estimate of the value of this work. For the object of the work is to show, "that diversified colouration follows the chief lines of structure, and changes at points, such as the joints, where function changes." Now, in publishing this generalization, Mr. Tylor—who was not a naturalist—took only a very limited view of the facts. When applied to the animal kingdom as a whole, the theory is worthless; and even within the limits of mammals, birds, and insects—which are the classes to which Mr. Tylor mainly ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... in expression, then, deals also with the generic, and evades embarrassing particulars in a generalization. We say Tragedy with the dagger and bowl, and it means something very different to the aesthetic sense from Tragedy with the case-knife and the phial of laudanum, though these would be as effectual for murder. It was a misconception of this that led poetry into ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... upon which to found a philosophy. If consciousness is the product of rhythm all things ARE conscious, for all have motion, and all motion is rhythmic. I wondered if Moxon knew the significance and breadth of his thought—the scope of this momentous generalization; or had he arrived at his philosophic faith by the tortuous and uncertain ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... McCarthy, Justin. Meaning of words. Memory. Metaphor: mixed. Methods of developing a composition: with reference to time-order, with reference to position in space, by use of comparison or contrast, by use of generalization and facts, by stating cause and effect, by a combination of methods. Metonymy. Metrical romance. Metrical tale. Mill. Mill, J. S. Miller, Mary Rogers. Milton. Mode. Montgomery. Morris, ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... Westermark's results, as the subject is beyond the domain of my special studies. The author has collected a great number of observations in order to avoid erroneous conclusions. He warns the reader against a hasty generalization, which attributes without proof certain customs of living savage tribes to our ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... philosophy was that powerfully presented in "The Quintessence of Ibsenism." It was, in brief, that conservative ideals were bad, not because They were conservative, but because they were ideals. Every ideal prevented men from judging justly the particular case; every moral generalization oppressed the individual; the golden rule was there was no golden rule. And the objection to this is simply that it pretends to free men, but really restrains them from doing the only thing that men want to do. What is the good of telling a community that it has every liberty ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... comprehend such cause, noumenally considered, is not to be supposed. To do this would be to solve that ultimate mystery which must ever transcend human intelligence. But it still may be possible for us to reduce the law of all progress, above set forth, from the condition of an empirical generalization, to the condition of a rational generalization. Just as it was possible to interpret Kepler's laws as necessary consequences of the law of gravitation; so it may be possible to interpret this law ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... problem from many viewpoints and there seemed to be no solution until it occurred to me to seek the explanation in certain of the postulates which make up the doctrine of evolution. I realize fully the difficulty and the danger in attempting to reach the generalization which I shall make later and in the hypothesis I shall propose, for there is, of course, no direct final proof of the truth of even the doctrine of evolution. It is idle to consider any experimental research into the cause of phenomena that ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... physicist who discovers a new law seldom succeeds in doing more than testing its general accuracy by experiments; it is reserved for his successors to note the divergence between his broad and sweeping generalization and particular instances which do not quite accord with it. So it was with Boyle's law that the volume of a gas varies in inverse ratio to the pressure to which it is exposed; so it is with the Darwinian theory, inasmuch as deterioration and degeneration play a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... could have taken the sharp, clear form of words; for to the poet practically developed and made manifest to the world, many other gifts besides the mere poetic sense are needed,—stern study, and logical generalization of scattered truths, and patient observation of the characters of men, and the wisdom that comes from sorrow and passion, and a sage's experience of things actual, embracing the dark secrets of human infirmity and crime. But despite all that has been said in disparagement ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... proceedings of its Committees, on questions connected with commerce and finance, had proved him to possess not only a clear practical acquaintance with the details of these subjects, but also principles of an enlarged and liberal character, and powers of generalization and a comprehensiveness of view rarely found combined in so young a man. The next three or four years were busy ones with him. It will be remembered that this was the era of the Reform Bill. Mr. Thomson did not take a prominent part in the discussions ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... with the generalization: "I don't believe anybody can know too much to keep a hotel. It won't hurt Jeff if he's been to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Wolfe, and Clive, we fill the forefront of our picture with clubs and coffee-houses, with the graces of Chesterfield and Horace Walpole, the beauties of Gainsborough and Romney, or the masterpieces of Sheraton and Adam. But each generalization, as we make it, seems more imperfect and unfair; and partly because Carlyle abused it so unmercifully, this century has in the last fifty years received ample justice from many of our ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... Generality. — N. {opp. 79} generality, generalization; universality; catholicity, catholicism; miscellany, miscellaneousness[obs3]; dragnet; common run; worldwideness[obs3]. everyone, everybody; all hands, all the world and his wife; anybody, N or M, all sorts. prevalence, run. V. be general ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of course, Kenelm could not at a glance comprehend in detail. But as the mind of a man accustomed to generalization is marvellously quick in forming a sound judgment, whereas a mind accustomed to dwell only on detail is wonderfully slow at arriving at any judgment at all, and when it does, the probability is that it will arrive at a wrong one, Kenelm judged correctly when ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cause, the final end, and the person meant to make use of the thing produced. It further is matter of experience that whatever consists of non-sentient matter is dependent on, or ruled by, a single intelligent principle. The former generalization is exemplified by the case of jars and similar things, and the latter by a living body in good health, which consists of non-intelligent matter dependent on an intelligent principle. And that the body is an effected thing follows from ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... to me there never was an age, since the dawn of time, when men ought to be less disposed to rest satisfied with the progress already made, than the age in which we live; for there never was an age more distinguished for ingenious research, for novel result, and bold generalization. ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett
... light, their first meeting having occurred in the dusk of a railway-station. Swithin was not in the habit of noticing people's features; he scarcely ever observed any detail of physiognomy in his friends, a generalization from their whole aspect forming his idea of them; and he now only noted a young man of perhaps thirty, who lolled a good deal, and in whose small dark eyes seemed to be concentrated the activity that the rest of his frame decidedly ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... the author of seven quartos on mathematics, showing very great power of generalization. He was also deep in the transcendental philosophy,[572] and had the Absolute at his fingers' ends. All this knowledge was rendered useless by a persuasion that he had greatly advanced beyond the whole world, with ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... these mountains are so broad, and a short distance in the woods seems so far, that one is by no means master of the situation after reaching the summit. And then there are so many spurs and offshoots and changes of direction, added to the impossibility of making any generalization by the aid of the eye, that before one is aware of it he is very ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... have before remarked, I am quite willing to believe that Holyoke is a pathless wilderness, in the English lady's sense. But when Mr. Burroughs makes the generalization that there are no foot-paths in this country, it seems to me he must be letting his boyhood get too far away ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... once more subjected to his deliberate observation and intuition; by this process the external and internal world are doubled in their intrinsic ideal, and give birth to analysis and abstraction, that is, to the specification and generalization ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... of our theme, we are astounded by the apparently hopeless confusion in which the whole is involved. Everywhere attempts at ill-founded generalization are encountered. We are compelled to admit, after perusing long debates in regard to the relative merits of various therapeutic measures, that those who were foremost to disparage the treatment ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... in every instance. There is always dramatic conflict between interesting characters, of course, but behind them is always the background of some considerable social tendency—some comprehensive generalization—that includes and explains them all. The commander from his eminence saw all the combatants: he knew what the fight was about, and it always was about something worth while. Bronson Howard never ...
— The Autobiography of a Play - Papers on Play-Making, II • Bronson Howard
... of Perception results in the formation of an internal picture or image of its ideas which intelligence can call up at any time without the sensuous, immediate presence of its object, and thus, through abstraction and generalization, arises the conception. The mental image may (1) be compared with the perception from which it sprang, or (2) it may be arbitrarily altered and combined with other images, or (3) it may be held fast in the form of ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... course,[37] I shall endeavor, therefore, to mass for you, in such rude and diagram-like outline as may be possible or intelligible, the main characteristics of the two schools, completing and correcting the details of comparison afterwards; and not answering, observe, at present, for any generalization I give you, except as a ground for subsequent closer and ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... Africa, Cambodia, India, North America (Eskimo), South America (Peru),[281] and there are survivals in modern Europe. In China this wholesale expulsion is still practiced in a very elaborate form.[282] Among the Ainu, it is said, on the occasion of any accident the "spirit of accidents" (a useful generalization) is driven away by the community.[283] In these cases the spirits are thought of as being in a sort corporeal, sensitive to blows, and also as afraid of noise. There is sometimes a combination of natural ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... man-made institutions, and that is what they amount to. Every girl in the world practically, except a few of us who teach or type-write, and then we're underpaid and sweated—it's dreadful to think how we are sweated!" She had lost her generalization, whatever it was. She hung for a moment, and then went on, conclusively, "Until we have the vote that ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... my pen is running ahead, an imagination prone to realistic constructions is struggling to paint a picture altogether prematurely. There is very much to be weighed and decided before we can get from our present generalization to the style of architecture these houses will show, and to the power and nature of the public taste. We have laid down now the broad lines of road, railway, and sea transit in the coming century, and we have got this general prophecy of "urban regions" ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... and a second form of platinum, that we named Pt. B. Thus we have tabulated in all 65 chemical elements, or chemical atoms, completing three of Sir William Crookes' lemniscates, sufficient for some amount of generalization. ...
— Occult Chemistry - Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements • Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater
... facts are affirmed or denied at once. But a general proposition is not merely a compendious form for recording and preserving in the memory a number of particular facts, all of which have been observed. Generalization is not a process of mere naming, it is also a process of inference. From instances which we have observed, we feel warranted in concluding, that what we found true in those instances holds in all similar ones—past, present, and future, however numerous they may be. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... must show the features of the Mind which tabernacles in nature. There can be no contradiction. Unquestionably an essential characteristic of the Mind in nature is the method of its action. There is a reign of Law. The highest generalization of the methods of this law which man has reached reveals this Power as acting, through every sphere, in continuous progressive development. One word embodies this supreme generalization—evolution. Christianity must fit into this universal order. Otherwise ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... The principles will have little value unless translated into practical methods; direct your teaching to their actual use in families. Your generalization is for guidance into application. Urge that the plans described be actually tried. Expect this and call for reports on plans tested in the daily experience of families. If a number of students would try, ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... petrified persons, by the time that I had composed a suitable remark, the slender opening had already closed, and my contribution was either not uttered at all, or hopelessly belated in its appearance. Or some deep generalization drawn from the dark backward of my vast experience would be produced, and either ruthlessly ignored or contemptuously corrected by some unsympathetic elder of unyielding voice and formed opinions. And then there was the crushing sense, at the conclusion of one of ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... rightly when they knew what they were doing, or, in the language of the Gorgias, 'did what they would.' He seems to have been the first who maintained that the good was the useful (Mem.). In his eagerness for generalization, seeking, as Aristotle says, for the universal in Ethics (Metaph.), he took the most obvious intellectual aspect of human action which occurred to him. He meant to emphasize, not pleasure, but the calculation of pleasure; neither is he arguing that pleasure is the ...
— Philebus • Plato
... when he rose, and said, "Mr. Burley, you have convinced me," it was not with the modesty of a sincere reasoner, but the triumph of one who has gained his end. But so struck, meanwhile, was our unheeded and silent listener with Burley's power of generalization and the wide surface over which his information extended, that when Randal left the room the boy looked at the slovenly, purposeless man, and said aloud, "True; knowledge ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... definite weight or in some multiple of this weight. He called this proportion the "atom," since it invariably enters compounds without division, and the weight of this atom is the atomic weight. This generalization was of great value inasmuch as it permitted the deduction of the atomic weight of a non-gasifiable element from a study of the densities of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... the earth, becomes flesh, manifests itself by institutions, and identifies itself with life. The daily act takes on a revolutionary value, and social transformation, if it comes some day, will only be the generalization of this act." It is true that Lagardelle's "direct action" tends towards revolution, but does it tend towards Socialism? His answer is that it does. But his answer itself indicates the tendency of syndicalism to drift back into conservative unionism and the mere demand for somewhat ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... distinguished. Shepherd, Mather, Troost, Torrey, and a few others, still pursue mineralogy for its own sake; but, generally, our mineralogists have turned geologists, studying rocks on a large scale, instead of their individual constituents, and vieing with their brethren in Europe in bold and successful generalization, and in the application of physical science to their subject. Maclure was one of the pioneers, and Eaton and Silliman contributed much to the stock of knowledge. This school has given rise to the great geological ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... also. In the field-mouse, the daisy, the water-fowl, he beholds types and symbols. His own experience stands for all men's. The conscience-stricken Macbeth is a poet when he cries, "Life is a walking shadow," and King Lear makes the same pathetic generalization when he exclaims, "What, have his daughters brought him to this pass?" Through the shifting phenomena of the present the poet feels the sweep of the universe; his mimic play and "the great globe itself" are alike an "insubstantial pageant," though it may happen, as Tennyson said ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... tapped it with a harmless ball. M. Stanislas Kapp had been deplorably heavy-handed; but really, when the world had come to that pass that one granted a meeting to a brewer's son!... This was M. de Grosjoyaux's nearest approach to a generalization. He kept looking through the window, over the shoulder of M. Ledoux, at a slender tree which stood at the end of a lane, opposite to the inn, and seemed to be measuring its distance from his extended arm and secretly wishing ...
— The American • Henry James
... explore; no heights of speculation which he has not scaled; no problem of the world over which he is not fruitfully toiling. Moreover, his thoroughness is the envy of the students of all other countries, and his hatred of sham scholarship and slipshod generalization is intense. ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... finds the generalization that it is the provincial who acquires the perspective requisite for a true estimate of a nation, and that it is the country-boy reared in lonely communion with himself who attains the deepest knowledge of human nature. If there be some degree of truth in this reflection, Publius Vergilius ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... and fear and a perpetual state of animosity and warfare are induced among contending groups. Thus out of primitive motives of combat the feud as a more generalized and psychical antagonism is produced, and these states are possible because of the powers of generalization in man which extend to the emotions and make possible the ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... sufficient flavoring of truth to make the erroneous notion pass as true. At bottom, the human soul loves truth, nor willingly believes or receives a lie. Our intellectual sin is synecdoche, the putting a part truth for a whole truth. Generalization is dangerous intellectual exercise. Our premise is insufficient, and our conclusion is self-sufficient, like some strutting scion of a decayed house. Trace the origin of this idea of a poet's non-sanity. He was not ordinary, as other men, but was extraordinary, and as such belonged to the upper rather ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... imagination was certainly as little sectarian as that of a seventeenth-century preacher could well be. His hero is primarily not a Baptist, but a man. He bears, perhaps, almost too close a resemblance to Everyman, but his journey, his adventures and his speech save him from sinking into a pulpit generalization. ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... Duerer and others. But this attention to minutiae was not the only result; the disposition of light and shade was also affected by the method. Shade was not to be had at small cost; its masses could not be dashed on in impetuous generalization, fields for the future recovery of light. They were measured out and wrought to their depths only by expenditure of toil and time; and, as future grounds for color, they were necessarily restricted to the natural shadow of every object, white being left for high lights of whatever hue. In consequence, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... implication seems to be that the intensely "personal and passionate" nature of woman is an advantage to her, if once she can lift herself from its thraldom, because it saves her from the danger of dry generalization which assails verse of more masculine temper. [Footnote: For treatment of the question of the poet's sex in American verse by women, see Emma Lazarus, Echoes; Olive Dargan, Ye Who are ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... Sefton, but the Secretary remained calm, composed and smiling, listening to Harley with the same air of interested curiosity shown by the others. Prescott saw it all with a flash of intuition; the Secretary had given Harley a hint, just a vague generalization, within the confines of truth, but without any names—enough to make those concerned uneasy, but not enough to put the power in any hands save those of the Secretary. Harley himself confirmed this by continuing the subject, ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... is a charming book, with illuminating passages, but it is too logical, too plausible, too full of the preciosity of dainty generalization, to reach the dark and arbitrary soul, either of Spain or ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... to rational generalization, which I illustrated from the law of larceny, are shown in the other branches of the law, as well as in that of crime. Take the law of tort or civil liability for damages apart from contract and the like. ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... little; but they show that they can think. But often they seem utterly stupid and lost, and one is perplexed to know what their difficulty can possibly be. One thing is clear, that they have little faculty of generalization. As you know, they seldom have a name for their island, but only names for each tiny headland, and bay, and village. The name for the island you must learn from the inhabitants of another island who view the one whose name you are seeking as one because, being distant, it must appear to them ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the community, and the larger world, and to cut across group life so as to see its characteristics, its interests, and its organization, is to study sociology in the most natural way and to obtain the necessary data for generalization. To attempt to study sociological principles without this preliminary investigation is to confuse the student and leave him in a sea ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... country far from their common home,—Jomini to Russia, Agassiz to the United States; and, dissimilar as were their objects and pursuits, their intellectual resemblance was fundamental. The pre-eminent quality of each was the power of rapid generalization, of mastering and subordinating details, of grasping and applying principles and laws. Agassiz differed as much from an animal-loving collector like Frank Buckland, whose father was one of his stanchest friends and co-workers, as Jomini differed from a fighting ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... Heth, who held that any kind of generalization constituted good talk. She added: "Who are all these people? How would ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... cite two or three of these cases before proceeding to a more generalized account. One must know concrete instances first; for, as Professor Agassiz used to say, one can see no farther into a generalization than just so far as one's previous acquaintance with particulars enables ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... domain. Who does not know fellows that always have an ill-conditioned fact or two which they lead after them into decent company like so many bull-dogs, ready to let them slip at every ingenious suggestion, or convenient generalization, or pleasant fancy? I allow no "facts" at this table. What! Because bread is good and wholesome and necessary and nourishing, shall you thrust a crumb into my windpipe while I am talking? Do not these muscles of mine represent ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... knowing how—he is eternally seeking the why of the how. Mystery is a challenge to him. It excites him like a red rag does a bull. At once he is for ripping the husks and the heart from mystery, so that he will know the how and the why, when it will be no longer mystery but a generalization and a scientifically ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... among savage tribes all over the world," interpreted by his remarks in another connection, is understood as referring to their common use of signs, and of signs formed on the same principles, but not of precisely the same signs to express the same ideas. In this sense of the generalization the result of the writer's study not only sustains it, but shows a surprising number of signs for the same idea which are substantially identical, not only among savage tribes, but among all peoples that use gesture ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... the case in all my travels. What is, or seems to be, accurate to-day of any given thing in a given place is wrong tomorrow under seemingly the same conditions; and although no theme could be more tempting, and no subject offer wider scope for ingenious hypothesis and profound generalization, one has to forego much temptation to "color" if he would be accurate of anything he writes of the Chinese. Eminent sinologues agree as to the impossibility of the conception of the Chinese mind and character as a whole, so glaring are the inconsistencies of the Chinese nature. ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... searches through it in vain for details of the plots and characters, and specimens of the verse, of interludes and plays which time, opportunity, and publishers combine to withhold from him. Notable exceptions to this generalization exist. Such are Sir A.W. Ward's monumental English Dramatic Literature, and that delightful volume, J.A. Symonds' Shakespeare's Predecessors; but the former extends its survey far beyond the limits of early drama, while the latter too often passes ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... far-reaching principles which govern the world, which are alone worthy of your attention. A fact which is not an illustration of a law, in the opinion of these persons appears to lose all its value. Incidents which do not fit into some great generalization, events which are merely picturesque, details which are merely curious, they dismiss as unworthy the interest of a reasoning being. Now, even in science this doctrine in its extreme form does not hold good. The most scientific ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... her shuddering shoulders to the grave. Probably, as she is good and wise, you will never find it out. A limpid brook ripples in beauty and bloom by the side of your muddy, stagnant self-complacence, and you discern no essential difference. "Water's water," you say, with your broad, stupid generalization, and go oozing along contentedly through peat-bogs and meadow-ditches, mounting, perhaps, in moments of inspiration, to the moderate sublimity of a cranberry-meadow, but subsiding with entire satisfaction ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... possibly true of imaginary cases, but are not true of man as he really acts. They therefore assert that economic laws can only be truly discovered by induction, or a study of phenomena first, as the means of reaching a generalization. To them Bagehot(80) answers that scientific bookkeeping, or collections of facts, in themselves give no results ending in scientific laws; for instance, since the facts of banking change and vary every day, no one can by induction alone reach any laws of banking; ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... was still tossing and buffeting the tree tops, and he made occasion of this to say, "This is a cold wynd a-blowin', Mister." "It is, rather," I assented. "I was think-in'," he observed from an apparent generalization, "that I wished I was at home." Then he suddenly added, "Help a poor man!" I was not wholly surprised at the climax, and I offered him, provisionally, a penny. "Will that do?" He hesitated perceptibly; then he allowed, with a subtle reluctance, ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... the time they reached the Jura and the plain of Northern Italy, when compared with what they are now, they seem directly connected with the Alps, and the mountains appear as their birthplace; so much so that the first attempts at a generalization concerning their origin started from the assumption that they must have been formed between the high ridges from which they seem to flow down. These facts, then the only ones known concerning a greater ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... women in any country a real tragedy. It is impossible to generalize with any degree of confidence about the sexual nature of either man or woman in our present state of crude and barbarous ignorance; but I am inclined—very tentatively—to agree that this generalization is correct, and that the creative impulse is an even stronger factor in the sexual life of women than of men. I realize the cruelty of a civilization in which war and its accessories create an artificial ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... farther than the rest, yet the lower classes long preceded the higher; that there has been on the whole a steady progression within each class and order; and that the highest plants and animals have appeared only in relatively modern times. It is only, however, in a broad sense that this generalization is now thought to hold good. It encounters many apparent exceptions, and sundry real ones. So far as the rule holds, all is as it should be upon an hypothesis ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... that any substitution or change of words will improve upon the precision of the text. His compression and selection of salient points are remarkable. Amid some commonplace philosophy he frequently rises to a generalization as brilliant as it is truthful. Then, too, one is impressed with the dignity of history; one feels that Gibbon looked upon his work as very serious, and thought with Thucydides, "My history is an everlasting possession, not a prize composition which ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... vegetable and animal life, the mesmeric influences, galvanism, magnetism, electricity, light and heat; and the body the sum of all the ponderable substances; in one word, "God is everything, and everything is God." This system is called "Monotheistic Pantheism." It is a vast generalization of everything into a higher unity, which exalts men and paving stones, and cats, dogs and reptiles, and monkeys, to the same level of God-head, or divinity. Man, the soul of men, as the system would term it, is the greatest manifestation of ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... saying, I've seen more living beauty, ripe and real, than all the nonsense of their stone ideal. In landscape alone is the principle of the critic true; and, having felt its truth here, it is but the headlong spirit of generalization which has induced him to pronounce it true throughout all the domains of Art. Having, I say, felt its truth here. For the feeling is no affectation or chimera. The mathematics afford no more absolute demonstrations, than the sentiment of his Art yields ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the worship of a Universal Soul, to have been the instinctive creed of any savage people or rude race of men. To imagine all nature with all its apparently independent parts, as forming one consistent whole, and as itself a unit, required an amount of experience and a faculty of generalization not possessed by the rude uncivilized mind, and is but a step below the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... facts and phenomena presented any such import, that was an affair for men of letters to deal with; but, as men of science, it was their duty to avoid the seductive temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, in the form of speculation, deduction, and generalization. ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... fulness that more than compensate for their lack of dry legal detail. Bacon seems indeed to have been a lawyer of the first order, with a keen scientific insight into the bearings of isolated facts and a power of generalization which admirably fitted him for the self-imposed task, unfortunately never completed, of digesting or codifying the chaotic ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... their subjective humanity in the same degree that it is ennobled to an objective existence. If the internal man is one with himself he will be able to rescue his peculiarity, even in the greatest generalization of his conduct, and the state will only become the exponent of his fine instinct, the clearer formula of his internal legislation. But if the subjective man is in conflict with the objective, and contradicts him in the character ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of what the schoolmen would have called—objectivity with subjectivity;—in plain English, the impression of a thing as it exists in itself, and extrinsically, with the image which the mind abstracts from the impression. Thus, number, or the total of a series, is a generalization of the mind, an 'ens rationis' not an 'ens reale'. I have read many attempts at a definition of a 'Bull', and lately in the Edinburgh Review; but it then appeared to me that the definers had fallen into the same fault with ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... partake of a part of greatness, for that will not make them great, etc.; nor can each object monopolise the whole. The only answer to this is, that 'partaking' is a figure of speech, really corresponding to the processes which a later logic designates by the terms 'abstraction' and 'generalization.' When we have described accurately the methods or forms which the mind employs, we cannot further criticize them; at least we can only criticize them with reference to their fitness as instruments ...
— Parmenides • Plato
... vivid interest of the narrative and the comprehensive generalization which springs naturally from the author's plan of a large work on American history, of which the two volumes now published are no more than a third or a fourth part, make it a book of ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... temperate and tolerant desire for human improvement and happiness, and almost unique in its entire freedom at once from doctrinairism, visionary enthusiasm, egotism, and an undue spirit of system. The genius of the author for generalization is so great, his instinct in political science so sure, that even the falsity of his premises frequently fails to vitiate his conclusions." (Saintsbury, George, in Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. XVIII, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... scientific generalization is based on certain facts which, taken in their collective capacity, mean the truth which is expressed in the formula. A higher generalization embraces those which are simpler, and unites by its expression the truths ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... with Balzac, that the surplus of general hypotheses overflows at times, and that the novels are too prone to digressions. Be that as it may, it seems incontestible that this was his master faculty, the virtue and vice of his thought. Let us see, however, by what singular detour this power of generalization—the antithesis, one might say, of the creative power—increased in him the faculty of the ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... and to know than did the same mind before entering school, but even a stronger, more self-directed, purposive and efficient zeal in such direction. Intellectual vivacity and point, clearness of conception, and truthfulness of generalization and of inference,—all these should appear in more marked degree, along with the increased sobriety and judgment, and the improved facility of practical adaptation, which properly characterize maturity of mind and habit. Now, we suggest the careful observation of any number of children, not ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... to kick him if he wasn't such a duffer," was Nick's reluctant thought, for he had wanted to be favourably impressed by the Dook. If this were really anything like an English duke, give him a crossing-sweeper! But he must not be too hasty in his generalization. He was unhappily sure that Mrs. May's position in her far-off world (world for which he was deemed unworthy) associated her with dukes, earls, barons, counts, and all sorts of titled anachronisms of every nation. Repulsive as this draggled specimen ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... theory by which everything they say from the beginning is false. According to your idea, there was never any hidden menace, or secret society, or Valley of Fear, or Boss MacSomebody, or anything else. Well, that is a good sweeping generalization. Let us see what that brings us to. They invent this theory to account for the crime. They then play up to the idea by leaving this bicycle in the park as proof of the existence of some outsider. The stain on the windowsill conveys the same idea. ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... perfectly sure, because in Paris streets it was my happy lot four months after the Armistice to talk with many American soldiers, among whom some felt sore about the French. Not one of these but saw with his good American sense, directly I pointed certain facts out to him, that his hostile generalization had been unjust. But, to quote the oft-quoted Mr. Kipling, that ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... embrace these other aspects, in addition to that of rational knowledge which has thus far been exclusively dwelt upon, requires us to examine its nature in the regions of beauty, joy, and conscience, in which, though generalization remains its intellectual method, it does not make its direct appeal to the mind. It is not enough to show that the creative reason in its intellectual process employs that common method which is the parent of all true knowledge, ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... sentinel, as he was termed by our ancestors)—viz. miles gregarius, or miles manipularis—there was none for an officer; that is to say, each several rank of officers had a name; but there was no generalization to express the idea of an officer abstracted from its several species or classes.] It cannot much surprise us that this department of the public service should gradually have gone to ruin or decay. Under the senate and people, under the auspices of those awful ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... vacillation, obscurity, uncertainty, are as foreign to his style as to his mind. He is almost rigid in his precision. Every word has its meaning, and every idea its stern, sure, decisive statement. His masterly powers of analysis, of reasoning, of generalization, are always adequately exhibited by a corresponding mastery of expression. The study of such a volume as the present is itself an education in statement and logic; and that it will be studied by thousands, in the colleges and out of the colleges of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... doubt: the teachers, for being more anxious to expound systems than to listen to difficulties, to make their theories plain than to analyse the theories of their—I will not say adversaries—but opponents; the would-be learners, for hasty generalization; for bringing to the conflict a deliberate prejudice against all traditional authority, a want of patience in translating dogmas into life, a tendency to flatly deny that such a transmutation ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... house with us. A real lady seldom appears in these comedies, and—to approach a paradox—when she does she usually comes perilously close to being no lady; the same is usually true of the real gentleman. The generalization in the Epilogue of The Captives may well be made particular: "Plautus finds few plays such as this which make good men better." Yet there is little in his plays which makes men—to say nothing of good ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... since we have no real equivalent for the term. It was applicable not merely to human conduct, but also to the acting of the lower animals, and even to the growth of plants. Now, apart from a craze of generalization we should hardly think of the "stern daughter of the voice of God" in connection with an amoeba corresponding successfully to stimulus, yet the creature in its inchoate way is exhibiting a dim analogy to duty. ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... to make any generalization on the amount that should be devoted to publicity. Taking the $1.50 novel as a standard, it might be said that figuring in all kinds of publicity—newspaper, magazine, circular, literary notices, etc.—from ten to twelve per cent of the wholesale price on the first edition of 10,000 would be a ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... Thereafter the child called, on the one hand, all birds and insects, on the other hand, all liquids, quack. Finally, it called all coins also quack, after having seen an eagle on a French sou. Thus the child came, by gradual generalization, to the point of designating a fly, wine, and a piece of money by the same onomatopoetic word, although only the first perception contained the characteristic ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... particularly of the natural ones. Physics, chemistry, geology, and the like are matters that have never entered his head. Even in studies more immediately connected with obvious everyday life, such as language, history, customs, it is truly remarkable how little he possesses the power of generalization and inference. His elaborate lists of facts are imposing typographically, but are not even formally important, while his reasoning about them is as exquisite a bit of scientific satire as ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... cottage by Gainsborough, very fine. Jackson's and Robinson's miniatures, and sketches in water-colors,—charming. Leslie's designs, with Stothard's on the same subject, are delightfully contrasted: Leslie's, neatly finished and full of individuality; Stothard's, a beautiful, free generalization, without finish. (But the engraver understands him, and finishes for him, adding the hands and feet in his own way.) It is a representation of Jeanie Deans's interview with the Queen. Leslie's figure is standing; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... impression on his imagination; and his leap from these remote theories to his interpretation of the plasmodia seemed an achievement of "genius." It may be said that this "feat of genius," this visionary generalization, prevented Laveran from seeing the truth. A form of arrogance and levity ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... devoted to duty. For a broad general impression that is perhaps a fair enough statement to start with; but when I am tempted to let it go at that, there is one striking exception that always rises up to point the finger of denial at this easy and common generalization. It is that of a young German officer, a mere stripling of twenty or thereabouts, with the most frank, open, ingenuous expression. One would expect to find him presiding at a Christian Endeavor social, rather than ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... place, generalization about any species of animal is an exceedingly dangerous thing. I believe that, in the case of the higher animals at least, the differences in individual temperament are quite likely to be more numerous than the specific likenesses. Just as individual ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... her eyes. Whether Newfoundland, mastiff, bloodhound, or what not, it was impossible to say. He seemed to be of too strange and mysterious a nature to belong to any variety among those of popular nomenclature. Being thus assignable to no breed, he was the ideal embodiment of canine greatness—a generalization from what was common to all. Night, in its sad, solemn, and benevolent aspect, apart from its stealthy and cruel side, was personified in this form. Darkness endows the small and ordinary ones among mankind with poetical power, and even the suffering woman threw ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... the attitude of the public and of the courts was more friendly to the accused witch. This explanation is at best, however, nothing more than a suggestion. We have not the material for confident generalization. ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... high authority in such a case, tells us that "we have every reason to believe, at least in the generality of cases, that a nebula is nothing more than a cluster of stars."[33] Sir David Brewster is equally explicit: "It was certainly a rash generalization to maintain that nebulae differed essentially from clusters of stars, because existing telescopes could not resolve them. The very first application of Lord Rosse's telescopes to the heavens overturned the hypothesis; and with such unequivocal facts as that instrument ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... is the grandest generalization of science that was ever conceived. It is the fundamental law of the relations of the two worlds, the psychic and the physical. The spiritual and material worlds unite in man, in whom the eternal spirit is combined with a transitory ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... a comprehensive accusation of selfishness against the sex. But it seems to be a generalization founded on a local and restricted observation. It is true of the woman of many artists and critics. The women of Du Maurier, for instance, belong to "a set," but they are not representatives of a sex. Becky Sharp ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... the top of a steeple, he could take it upon him to assure me, that the feeling of vastness and sublimity induced by an aerial ascent, was almost in direct contrast to the sensations of the diver—the one being comparable to the effects produced by the enlarged views of generalization, indulged in by speculative ontologists—the other, to those that result from the inductive process of searching into the physical arcana of nature. He was not aware of the bent of my mind, or his comparison might have ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... unrestrained talk to find that the delicious non sequitur, which is the charm of the grave-diggers' conversation in "Hamlet," is by no means obsolete. But who can write such a colloquy? It would be easier, we fancy, for a clever man to give a sketch of Lord Bacon, with all his rapid and profound generalization, than to follow the slow and tortuous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... all other kinds of things;" and, he continues, "the present state of our knowledge furnishes us with no link between the living and the not-living." Now let us carefully remember that the great doctrine of Charles Darwin has furnished biology with a magnificent generalization; one indeed which stands upon so broad a basis that great masses of detail and many needful interlocking facts are, of necessity, relegated to the quiet workers of the present and the earnest laborers of the years to come. But it ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... to apply this generalization too early. And this brings me to an important factor in the case: the factor ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw |
