Before agreeing to accept such results, it would be well to look critically at the assumption from which they are deduced. Is it true that the only laws we can know directly are laws of perceptual and intellectual processes? On the contrary, it can be successfully maintained that we do not come to know the characteristic tea tures of space and time, as forms of perception. or the uniformi ties. of thought-functions, until we have come to know many more 'objective' laws. Not only so, but the evidence upon which our knowledge of logical laws rests is exactly of the same kind as that upon which our knowledge of the laws of nature rests, viz. experience. Just as our only reason for saying that fire burns is that we have experienced the fact. we thus ex press; so when we say that our thought always refers attributes to substance or that our thought demands for every event a cause, our only justi fication for our statement is the fact that we observe us a matter of experience that we always do think attributes as belonging to substances, or events as conditioned by causes. In short, logic is au inductive science resting upon experience (see Lome), and an idealism which rests upon logic as Kant.ian idealism does cannot justify a hard and fast distinction in respect of knowable mess between laws of external nature and laws of thought ; it cannot do this simply because both kinds of laws are discovered in exactly the same way. Therefore, it is as unwarrantable to argue that, in so far as external nature has any laws. these laws must be the product of thought, as it would be to argue that in so far as thought has any laws, these laws must be the product of external nature. Of the two kinds of laws, neither need be said to rest on the other unless experience shows that either is dependent on the other. It is only a begging of the question in the interests of subjectivism to say that we know thought-laws directly and physical laws only in so far as they are thought-products. If experi ence cannot justify a universal judgment, then our logical laws are merely statements that, in the past and present particular acts of thought, we have acted thus and so; they are not statements of how we act in all thinking. If. on the other hand, the experience of the uniformity of our intellectual operations in the past and in the present justifies us in generalizing this limited uniformity into statements valid of all thinking, not only past and present, but future. then the experience of the uniformity of physical processes justifies us in generalizing these processes into natural laws, universally valid. In other words, one cannot legitimatize scientific induction by reducing the objects of scientific investigation into products of invariable thought-processes; for the assertion of the invariability of thought-processes is itself justifiable only as the result of a scien tific induction.
It should have become clear by this time that a justification of generalization in the sense of an attempt to render it acceptable by subsuming it under some more valid principle is hopeless; and also that any repudiation of the validity of generalization itself rests either upon some dog matic and unjustifiable assumption, or upon the tacit presupposition of the validity of generaliza tion. What then are we to do? The obvious answer is that we must accept generalization as a fact, and then see whether there is any reason why we should not generalize. The fact is., that in so far as I think, 1 am making universal judg ments, or making judgments that can be vali dated only by universal judgments.
The reason for any act whatever, or for any particular judgment. is always in the last resort a universal judgment. This universal judgment, however, is not logically self-supporting. It gets
its justification in the particular we have. In other words. although universal judg ments are the only reasons we can give for par ticular judgments which are not themselves ex pressions of actual experiences, yet the only justification we ever get for these universal judg ments is found in the actual particular experi ences we have. Even such an 'axiomatic' judg ment as the celebrated "Things equal to the same thing are equal to each other" can be justifiably accepted only if it is recognized as correctly ex pressing our experiences with regard to equal things. In our adult years, it is of course not necessary that we should recall these specific ex periences. In most cases this axiomatic judgment is psychologically nothing but a succession of word-images, or some combination of such images with a feeling-tone of familiarity. But when we are not satisfied with this psychic content, but ask ourselves whether it is really true that things equal to the same thing are equal to each other, we begin to call up ideas of things equal to the same thing, or we get perceptions of things equal to the same thing, and compare them with each other. If we finally satisfy ourselves of the truth of the 'axiom,' it is only as a result of a new induction from these data, presented in idea or perception, What is true of this axiom is true of every other `general' proposition. Every universal judg ment is either a judgment whose truth is envis aged in some particular ideational or perceptional or ideational-perceptional complex, or it is a mere process of word-images with a 'familiar' feeling. In the former case the partieular complex, idea tional or otherwise, serves as a point of depar ture for the generalization. which is the recogni tion of interest in this particular only because of its 'vicarious' character. i.e. not so much be cause in this particular case the judgment holds good, but because this particular ease is recog nized as only one of a class, in all the mem bers of which the same judgment holds good. Psychology seems to have quite well estab lished the fact that this recognition of vicari ousness is based upon a certain distinctive 'feel ing' element in consciousness. which some call the feeling of vicariousness. But whatever may be the analytic psychology of the judgmental pro cess, the fact is that not only do we pronounce judgment on the particular before us, but we pronounce it upon all the particulars represented by the one particular ideationally (or percep tually) present ; and upon all these particulars not only as particulars, but also as each vicari ous. In other words, the whole meaning of the judgment is not exhausted in the fact that it is true of each particular to which it applies; there is also included in the meaning the recognition that because it is true of each particular. there fore these particulars are not merely particulars, accidentally connected by the incidence of the same judgment upon each of them, but are also particulars representing the identity found in each, which identity makes it possible to pass the same judgment upon all. That identity or community of character which justifies the in clusion of all the particulars within the meaning of the same judgment is not something externally combined with the mere particularity of each. It is something in the particularity of each which makes it not a mere particular, but a vicarious particular, or, in other words, a particularization of a universal. Conversely we may say that all particular features are potential universals; i.e. though in some judgments particular features may function as particulars, still in other judg ments these same features may function as uni versals.