In such cases it is
the generalization on which the class is based which is the difficult
part of your task.
In general, however, if you can show your readers that the present case
belongs in a class of cases which can be recognized as belonging
together by virtue of definable characteristics, you have established an
excellent foundation for an inference based on those characteristics.
37. Reasoning by Causal Relation. Reasoning by generalization rises
greatly in certainty, however, whenever you can show the workings of
cause and effect. If a college receives every year from a certain school
a number of boys who are slack and lazy students, the dean of that
college may come to generalize and expect most of the boys from that
school to be poor timber. If, however, he finds that the master of the
school will take and keep any boy who lives in the town, he is able to
argue from this as a cause to the conclusion that the standards of the
school are low, and then from these low standards as a cause to the poor
quality of the graduates of the school.
Here is another example, from Professor James:
I am sitting in a railroad car, waiting for the train to start. It
is winter, and the stove fills the car with pungent smoke. The
brakeman enters, and my neighbor asks him to "stop that stove
smoking.
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