human
There was commonly shown a faculty of seizing cardinal truths rather than of accumulating detailed information. The implications of phenomena were then, as always, more interesting to me than the phenomena themselves. What did they prove? was the question instinctively put. The consciousness of causation, to which there was a natural proclivity, and which had been fostered by my father, continually prompted analyses, which of course led me below the surface and made fundamental principles objects of greater attention than the various concrete illustrations of them. So that while my acquaintance with things might have been called superficial, if measured by the _number_ of facts known, it might have been called the reverse of superficial, if measured by the _quality_ of the facts. And there was possibly a relation between these traits. A friend who possessed extensive botanical knowledge, once remarked to me that, had I known as much about the details of plant-structure as botanists do, I never should have reached those generalisations concerning plant-morphology which I had reached.
gpt
the power of generalising or of working out unifying formulæ. His first book _Social Statics_ set out with a general principle; his first essay was entitled,
human
A theory of population, _deduced from the general law_ of animal fertility ; his life-work was the _Synthetic Philosophy_. One of George Eliot's witticisms made game of Spencer's aptitude for generalisation. He had been explaining his disbelief in the critical powers of salmon, and his aim in making flies
gpt
human
Yes, she said,