EVOLUTION AND SOCIETY 



country, it is approximately certain that, let us say, a 

 given number will die during a given year, and from 

 this fact we can draw some useful information, but 

 this knowledge, historically, is far overshadowed by 

 the importance of knowing when a certain few indi- 

 viduals will die; and this specific datum is just exact- 

 ly that which the mathematics of probability, or sta- 

 tistics, does and must ignore. For example, we should 

 be safe in saying that the assassination of Lincoln had 

 far more effect on the history of the United States 

 than had the deaths of all the other men who died 

 during that year. Or, again, it is now quite customary 

 to figure the financial profit to a community which re- 

 sults from the lowering of the number of deaths 

 caused by a given disease ; but statisticians neglect the 

 fact that if the life of a great creator of wealth were 

 saved the gain would rise enormously, or that if an in- 

 cendiary's life should be saved, he might burn the 

 property of the whole community. Since Buckle's time 

 the activities of statisticians have been unceasing and 

 we are swaddled in sheets of figures; it would be a 

 comfort to us harassed beings if it were better known 

 that the majority of the statistics were futile, be- 

 cause their collectors and interpreters do not know 

 enough physics to understand the Law of the Virial 

 which proves that a generalization from statistics can 

 be valid only in so far as the activities of the indi- 

 viduals forming the collection are negligible. 



After Buckle has proposed the general laws which 



C 313 1 



