tire class of facts. No sane person begins to think about rivers wholesale or at large. He begins with the one river that has presented some puzzling trait. Then he studies other rivers to get light upon the baffling features of this one, and at the same time he employs the characteristic traits of his original object to reduce to order the multifarious details that appear in connection with other rivers. This working back and forth preserves unity of meaning, while protecting it from monotony and narrowness. Contrast, unlikeness, throws significant features into relief, and these become instruments for binding together into an organized or coherent meaning dissimilar characters. The mind is defended against the deadening influence of many isolated particulars and also against the barrenness of a merely formal principle. Particular cases and properties supply emphasis and concreteness; general principles convert the particulars into a single system.
All insight into meaning effects generalization (iv) Hence generalization is not a separate and single act; it is rather a constant tendency and function of the entire discussion or recitation. Every step forward toward an idea that comprehends, that explains, that unites what was isolated and therefore puzzling, generalizes. The little child generalizes as truly as the adolescent or adult, even though he does not arrive at the same generalities. If he is studying a river basin, his knowledge is generalized in so far as the various details that he apprehends are found to be the effects of a single force, as that of water pushing downward from gravity, or are seen to be successive stages of a single history of formation. Even if there were acquaintance with only one river, knowledge of it under such conditions would be generalized knowledge.
