Note (return) — Chapter XI

Abstraction is thus the process, the instrument of the Platonic dialectic. It is important, however, that we should distinguish between the method of comparative abstraction, as employed in physical inquiry, and that immediate abstraction, which is the special instrument of philosophy. The former proceeds by comparison and generalization, the latter by simple separation. The one yields a contingent general principle as the result of the comparison of a number of individual cases, the other gives an universal and necessary principle by the analysis of a single concrete fact. As an illustration we may instance "the principle of causality." To enable us to affirm "that every event must have a cause," we do not need to compare and generalize a great number of events. "The principle which compels us to pronounce the judgment is already complete in the first as in the last event; it can change in regard to its object, it can not change in itself; it neither increases nor decreases with the greater or less number of applications." 582 In the presence of a single event, the universality and necessity of this principle of causality is recognized with just as much clearness and certainty as in the presence of a million events, however carefully generalized.