[1] The collective or general judgment, as commonly explained, cannot be converted “simply,” because the predicate is “wider” than the subject, and the same rule is accepted for the relation of consequent to antecedent. The aim of science, it might almost be said, is to get beyond the kind of judgment to which this rule applies.
5. The difference between guess-work and demonstration rests on the difference between a detached quality or relation striking enough to suggest something to us, and a system thoroughly known in its parts as depending on one another. This is so even in recognising an individual person; it is necessary to know that the quality by which you recognise him is one that no one else possesses, or else { 143} it is guess-work. Still more is this the case in attempting a scientific connection. All scientific connection is really by system as between the parts of the content. A quality is often forced on our attention by being repeated a great many times in some particular kind of occurrence, but as long as we do not know its _causal_ connection with the properties and relations involved in the occurrence it is only guess-work to treat them as essentially connected. This is a matter very easy to confuse, and very important. It is easy to confuse, because a number of instances does help us really in inference, as it always insensibly gives us an immense command of content; that is to say, without knowing it we correct and enlarge our idea of the probable connection a little with every instance. So the connection between the properties that strike us becomes much larger and also more correct than it is to people who have only seen a few instances. But this is because the instances are all a little different, and so correct each other, and show transitions from more obvious forms to less obvious forms of the properties in question which lead us up to a true understanding of them. If the instances were all exactly the same they would not help us in this way, but our guess would still be a guess, however many instances might have suggested it.
I remember that a great many years ago I hardly believed in the stone-age tools being really tools made by men. I had only seen a few bad specimens, one or two of which I still think were just accidentally broken flints which an old country clergyman took for stone-age tools. This was to me then a mere guess, viz. that the cutting shape proved { 144} the flints to have been made by men. And obviously, if I had seen hundreds of specimens no better than these, I should have treated it as a mere guess all the same. But I happened to go to Salisbury, and there I saw the famous Blackmore Museum, where there are not only hundreds of specimens, but specimens arranged in series from the most beautiful knives and arrow-heads to the rudest. There one’s eye caught the common look of them at once, the better specimens helping one to interpret the worse, and the guess was almost turned into a demonstration, because one’s eyes were opened to the sort of handwork which these things exhibit, and to the way in which they are chipped and flaked.