The demand still presses upon us for justifica tion of this fact of universalization. Because particulars are not mere particulars. but are unique variations of universals, there is no logical impropriety in 'universalizing' them; that is, in looking at their universal rather than at their unique aspect. We thus escape the difficulty which particularism cannot escape and cannot solve. For particularism begins by asserting that only particular judgments are justified. That is, it misinterprets the fact that all judgments, when real and not verbal, are based on envisaged particulars, into the error that all judgments are based on mere particulars. We have seen that if they were so based. then there would be no justifi cation for the universality of judgment. There is, however. a bar to an indiscriminate univer salization. it does not follow that because a par ticular is a unique version of a universal, it is therefore a unique version of any universal you please. The problem now becomes one of con crete justification of the actual universalization we make. Take an example: To-day, when the thermometer stood at 75 degrees Fahrenheit, and a dog was lying in my basement ; when the barom eter was 29.70, and may child was playing with a toy engine; when the atmosphere was saturated with moisture and a lire-alarm was ringing; when the wind was blowing from the north and I was writing at my desk. it began to rain. In this example I have of course given only a few of the indefinite number of manifold and various fea tures which characterized the concrete situation at the time it began to rain. Each one of these features. being a particularized universal, may legitimately be universalized. But not every one of these features can be universally connected with rain. It is the business of the meteorologist to discover just which of the particulars is so connected. Ile can do this by careful induction (q.v.) from a sufficiently wide experience. The laws of induction are the statements of the prin ciples an investigator must follow in making correct generalizations. These laws do not jus tify, they merely regulate, the process of gen eralization. The nature of the material dealt with can alone justify the process, in that that nature is itself universal in one of its aspects.
But it may be said in answer to this justifica tion of generalization. that, while it is granted that particulars never appear in intelligent ex perience as bare particulars, still the element of particularity can be traced to sense and that of universality to thought. Therefore, it is alleged, particularity is more real; it needs no justifica tion because it is an inexpugnable datum; univer sality, however, being a thought-product, bears the marks of artificiality common to all elabora tions of raw material. Can the result of such elaboration, it is asked, claim with propriety to stand as representative of reality? is reality not that which we do not make, but Lind? This is the attitude of many epistemologists. It would have much to recommend it if it could be con sistently carried out. For there is no doubt that there is a real distinction between the matter which thought elaborates and the result of that elaboration. And yet that distinction must not be maintained in such a way as to invalidate the procedure which leads up to it. To say that sense-elements are real and that thought-products are artificial is to assume that without the process of thought time sense-elements authenti cate themselves as real. We have no experi ential warrant for saying that mere sense can recognize itself as sense. Only because a careful, thoughtful discrimination has led us to the dis covery that experience has at least two distinct features, viz. sense and thought, and also only because thoughtful investigation leads us to iden tify sense with reality par excellence, can We assert that without sense there can he no reality. If, however, this assertion is changed into the statement that sense is real and thought ficti tious, then it becomes suicidal. it denies the validity of the thought-process which has led to the assertion. and thus leaves the assertion unfounded. Thought alone can discriminate, for
instance, hallucinations from perceptions; hence thought is indispensable to the recognition of reality: and the validity of the knowledge given by sense-reality stands or falls with the validity of thought-processes. This is a truth not suffi ciently realized. We may not blow hot and cold upon thought—blow hot when we need thought to authenticate sense-reality; blow cold when, having got certainty as to sense-reality, we pro ceed to freeze thought out. The validity and competency of thought is presupposed in the com petency of any knowledge of reality. Therefore we many say that the validity of thought is the one thing which philosophical doubt may not con sistently assail.
This is not to say that any particular thought process may not he scrutinized with a suspicion of its validity. It is merely to say that if any thought-process is to he condemned. sentence is passed upon it by a jury of peers. Only thought may condemn thought. But how can thought eon demn thought? Only by examining its own pro cedure with a view to ascertaining whether it is consistent. No extraneous standard is applied. Even when we test the results of our thinking, by comparing them with facts of sense-pereep I ion. the final arbiter is thought. in that the sen sible facts confirm or overthrow nothing. except in accordance with the demand for consistency, which demand is made by thought. In other words, when doubt arises as to the validity of any intellectual process, and when in order to remove this doubt we appeal to sense-experience, it is only as thinking beings and in accordance with the laws of thought that we interpret the results of the appeal. Thought may not make reality, but without thought there can be no recognition of reality.
But here again an objection will probably be raised. It will be said that psychology shows sense-consciousness to have existed long before thought appeared on the scene. Thought is a new-comer; sense it as old as consciousness it self. Granted the truth of this objection, what follows? Merely that psychology as a science laboriously wrought out by much comparative (= thinking) observation of conscious experi ence, discloses the temporal priority of sense to thought. Notwithstanding all this, mere sense experience cannot be experience of reality if by reality is meant what we know as reality; for reality with us is what it is only by virtue of contrasts which thought has made. If we there fore maintain, on the basis of psychological rev elations, that many animals know reality without having that knowledge mediated by thought, it must also be maintained that that knowledge of reality is something so utterly unlike our human knowledge, that nothing but confusion comes of calling the two things by the same name. But, it may be said in rejoinder, we human beings experience something like that un thinking apprehension of reality. Sometimes in us thought-activity seems entirely suspended and only a sense-consciousness can be discovered in cair mental processes. In extreme lassitude of body and mind, nay we not lie on the grass and look up at the sky and drink in reality without a single aet of thought? Yes and no. The answer depends on what is meant by thought. Some psy chologists nowadays make a distinction between thought processes and association processes. Trains of images that follow each other without any experience of self-activity are called assoeia tion-trains. Those that are accompanied by rec ognized self-activity are called thought-trains. If thought. is thus discriminated from association, it must be confessed that we can have experiences without thought. But after all, what is this self activity? It seems to be nothing but sensations of tendinous strain and arlieular movement. The distinction thus made between association and thought turns out to be a distinction between association of ideas without a sense of strain and association with a sense of strain. Why any sense of strain accompanying a process should have any significance as regards the validity of the process is difficult to discover.