Here the "humours," to anticipate Ben Jonson, give names not only to the characters of the play, but to the plays themselves.[206] As adopted by the drama, the orator's view that people of a certain age and rank are likely to behave in certain fashions was perverted to the dramatical law of decorum, that people of certain age or rank must on the stage act up to this generalization of what was characteristic.

When, therefore, the economist indulges in a generalization about psychology, even when he gives it as a reason for an economic proposition, in nine cases out of ten the economics will not depend upon the psychology; the psychology will rather be an inference (and very possibly a crude and hasty one) from the economic facts of which he is tolerably sure.

In fact, a more feebly supported generalization from more insufficient data it is hard to conceive.

Even were we rash enough to pronounce progress to be on the whole prevalent within the narrow field of our own experience, surely it were nothing but the inevitable "provincialism" of the human mind to pass per saltum from that, to a generalization for all possible experience.

Restate in concrete terms such generalizations as the following: Experience is the best teacher.

It is the reasoning faculty acting per saltum, the sense of analogy brought to a focus; it is generalization in a flash, logic by the electric telegraph, the sense of likeness in unlikeness, that lies at the root of all discoveries; it is the prose imagination, common-sense at fourth proof.

Varieties of character in an audience depend upon its passions, its virtues and vices, its age or youth, and its position in life.[201] Aristotle's generalizations on the character of young people and old, of the wealthy, noble and powerful, display penetrating acumen.

It is but fair to apply an equally large generalization to tobacco.

Illinois is a good example of the truth of the generalizations at the beginning of the preceding paragraph.

This truth, established by Agassiz, has, more than any other, enlightened the history of creation, and prepared for the generalization by which the whole may be comprehended.

Confining our attention now to man, whose government is the most complex, we may put our generalization into this form: Man establishes government because by nature he is a social being.

For in laying down the principle upon which the primary truths of Consciousness, the original data of intelligence, are to be ascertained and distinguished from generalizations out of experience and custom, he declares that the one single and certain mark is Necessitythey must be beliefs which we are under the necessity of believingof which we cannot get rid by any mental effort.

Imitating the condescension of some contemporary philosophers of the Infinite, he graciously accepts Christianity and patronizes the idea of Deity, though he gives you to understand that he could easily pitch a generalization outside of both.

Why should he, who can throw a girdle of generalization round the universe in less than forty minutes, stoop to master details?