Page:Philosophical Review Volume 11.djvu/126

110 a sample, or specimen, or instance. It has no worth in itself, but only as a sample. It is only a more or less imperfect illustration of the general relation which is the true object of regard.

An examination of these reasons will, however, lead us to the conclusion that while in the end we shall still have ground to consider the value of experiment as applied to the physical world to be genetic rather than strictly historical, yet this is due to an abstraction which we have introduced for our own purpose—that of more adequate control. The serial order, taken in itself or as reality, is strictly historical, and it is only by an intellectual abstraction (justified from the end it subserves), that we get pairs of facts which may show up at any point in the series; and thus get ground for attributing to them a generalized or non-historic meaning. Their existence, though not their working value, remains historic. The problem of origins is, even in the case of the physical world, a strictly specific or individualized matter. We have no way of getting at the origin of water in general. Experiment has to do with the conditions of production of a specific amount of water, at a specific time and place, under specific circumstances: in a word, it must deal with just this water. The conditions which define its origin must be stated with equal definiteness and circumstantiality. We have a specific situation in which at a given point in time a particular fact does not present itself, and then another point at which it is found. The problem is just the discovery of the individual conditions which have made the difference at the two historical periods. It is these conditions which define to us the emerging or manifestation of the new fact, and which constitute its 'origin.' The question is a perfectly determinate, that is, individualized, one. What facts must be present in order that another fact may show itself? Any scientist can easily say to-day that by causation he means simply a relation of definite antecedence and consequence. Not every scientist, however, seems to have learned the full meaning of the proposition; viz., that the value of the conception is historical, a question of defining the conditions under which a given phenomenon develops.