An introductory text-book of logic - Mellone, Sydney - Rare Books at ...

346 THE PROBLEMS WHICH WE HAVE RAISED.
to affirm the necessary connection of the attributes of
materiality and gravitation." Mr Bosanquet distinguishes
these as generic judgments, for they rest
"
on a connec
"
tion of content or presumption of causality
/.<?., they
assert that given attributes necessarily result in certain
others. We may say, therefore, that they assert a
"
general
law." These judgments do not depend on an enumeration
of instances. In Dr Martineau s words,
" The
foresight
of its particular cases is not included in the meaning or
in the evidence of a general rule; and a person may
reasonably assent to the Law of Refraction without any
suspicion of the vast compass
of facts over which its
interpretation ranges. There are grounds whatever
account we may give of them for ascribing attributes
to certain natures or kinds of being, without going
through the objects included under them or having
any prescience of their actual contents. It is not
necessary to know the natural history of all the varieties
of mankind before we can venture to affirm mortality of
human beings in general."
The simplest instances of this type of universal judg
ment are found in mathematics e.g.,
" The three interior
angles of any triangle are together equal to two right
" The circumference of a circle is incommen
"
angles ;
surable with its diameter." Here there is an assertion
of a necessary connection. In every instance, the pro
perty stated in the subject of the propositions has as a
consequence the property stated in the predicate. The
statements do not rest upon an enumeration of instances,
but on the connection of the concept of the angles of a
triangle with that of two right angles, and on the con
nection of the concept of a circular line with that of a
straight line. And this connection may be asserted as
true without any limitation to instances at any particular