Page:Philosophical Review Volume 25.djvu/847

No. 6.] Now a cultural idea, when concrete, and referring to an entity or type of entities commonly recognized, must be considered to comprise all predicates which are known by any competent observers to belong to the given subject; while, if that be a genus, it includes extensively all its species and all their individuals, and, therefore, implies to scientific imagination (though it does not logically connote) all the attributes of each of the individuals. Similarly a cultural idea, when abstract, must be considered to stand related to all subjects to which it is scientifically known that the given abstract predicate applies. It is evident that, in both cases, the corresponding personal idea may be less adequate (i.e., less charged with significance) than the cultural idea. The individual may have enough knowledge to recognize a given object or type, but he may not happen to be interested in it, and may know very little of what is known about it by other people for whom it is interesting. A similar consideration holds good, with even more force, of abstract ideas; for the more important of these, such as tend to attain expression as laws, can be grasped only by serious study of some relevant branch of science, in which each abstract idea appears in connection with many correlated concrete ideas. Abstract scientific ideas belong to humanity collectively, not in the sense of belonging to all or nearly all human beings, but rather in the sense of belonging each to some group of devoted specialists who, by means of their literary intercourse, as well as by means of their personal observation, calculation, and reasoning, interpret and unify the experience of mankind in relation to some chosen object-matter. Philosophical thinkers themselves should properly form such a group of specialists; though their speciality consists in viewing the universe and humanity, in their more permanent aspects, as connected wholes, and hence in harmonizing the data of the various departmental sciences and arts. This philosophical function is one which, if properly fulfilled, has unique social importance; supplying, as it must, the outlines of an all-round liberal education, in which as many individuals as possible should share.