Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/360

 344 J. ELLIS MCTAGGABT : we must make one of two definite statements about each of them. Now we cannot take them one by one, and, pointing to each in turn, say This has it, This has not it, and so on. For then we should have got back to predicating Universals of mere Individuals as such, and this we have seen already to be inadmissible. Since the Individuals of the subject, then, are not to be taken as Individuals, they must be united by a Universal there is no other way. And we have just seen that it will not do to unite them by a Universal which covers more Individuals besides them, since this will give only a Particular Judgment. There is only one course left. We must group our Individuals by means of a Subject- Universal which just covers them, so that we can say that wherever the Subject- Universal is found the Predicate- Universal will be found too. In other words, we must be able to make general propositions. We must be able to say All A are B. All the Individuals, of which the predicate can be affirmed, need not indeed be brought under the same Subject-Universal. That would mean that we had discovered an invariable antecedent to B, and could say, not only that All A is B, but that All B is A. This is unnecessary. What we must be able to do is to bring all the Individuals, of which B is predicated, under some Subject-Universal or another, so that, whenever we predicate B, we have some Universal which is invariably accompanied by B. The advance which is made in this category is evident and striking. Here, for the first time, w r e become entitled to assert general propositions. That is to say, for the first time science becomes possible. However certainly and clearly it be known that everything stood in relations of reciprocal causality with everything else, and that nothing happened without a cause, this would be insufficient for science. Un- less the results of that determination could be expressed in general propositions, so that we can say that some are always or never found in conjunction with others, it would be im- possible to classify, to predict, or to explain. The step is important, and it is one at which the sceptic often stops. He will admit, sometimes, that there really are general qualities qualities possessed by more than one Individual, but he will deny that there really are any general laws connecting one quality with another. He does not merely assert that the general laws which we have in fact discovered have much that is subjective and erroneous about them, which no one could deny to be true in the present imperfect state of our knowledge. He asserts, further, that