ght into play. For abstraction
deliberately selects from the subject matter of former experiences that
which is thought helpful in dealing with the new. It signifies conscious
transfer of a meaning embedded in past experience for use in a new one.
It is the very artery of intelligence, of the intentional rendering of
one experience available for guidance of another.

Science carries on this working over of prior subject matter on a large
scale. It aims to free an experience from all which is purely personal
and strictly immediate; it aims to detach whatever it has in common with
the subject matter of other experiences, and which, being common, may
be saved for further use. It is, thus, an indispensable factor in social
progress. In any experience just as it occurs there is much which,
while it may be of precious import to the individual implicated in
the experience, is peculiar and unreduplicable. From the standpoint
of science, this material is accidental, while the features which are
widely shared are essential. Whatever is unique in the situation, since
dependent upon the peculiarities of the individual and the coincidence
of circumstance, is not available for others; so that unless what is
shared is abstracted and fixed by a suitable symbol, practically all the
value of the experience may perish in its passing. But abstraction
and the use of terms to record what is abstracted put the net value of
individual experience at the permanent disposal of mankind. No one
can foresee in detail when or how it may be of further use. The man of
science in developing his abstractions is like a manufacturer of tools
who does not know who will use them nor when. But intellectual tools
are indefinitely more flexible in their range of adaptation than other
mechanical tools.

Generalization is the counterpart of abstraction. It is the functioning
of an abstraction in its application to a new concrete experience,--its
extension to clarify and direct new situations. Reference to these
possible applications is necessary in order that the abstraction may be
fruitful, instead of a barren formalism ending in itself. Generalization
is essentially a social device. When men identified their interests
exclusively with the concerns of a narrow group, their generalizations
were correspondingly restricted. The viewpoint did not permit a wide and
free survey. Men's thoughts were tied down to a contracted space and a
short time,--limited to their o