VML-4/10/02

[Guest guest]

The generalization of the Personal God is another case in point. We

have seen how this generalization was reached, and was called the sum

total of all consciousness. But a difficulty arises-it is an

incomplete generalization. We take up only one side of the facts of

nature, the fact of consciousness, and upon that we generalize. but

the other side is left out. So, in the first place it is a defective

generalization. There is another insufficiency, and that relates to

the second principle. Everything should be explained from its own

nature. There may have been people who thought that every apple that

fell to the ground was dragged down by a ghost, but the explanation

is the law of gravitation; and although we know it is not a perfect

explanation, yet it is much better than the other, because it is

derived from the nature of the thing itself, while the other posits

an extraneous cause. So throughout the whole range of our knowledge;

the explanation which is based upon the nature of the thing itself is

a scientific explanation. and an explanation which brings in an

outside agent is unscientific.