556 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



The grasp of large numbers, the methodical array of 

 figures and the registration of events, would in itself be 

 of little use were it not for a fundamental assumption 

 which appeals to common-sense and has been confirmed 

 by science, though it is hardly anywhere expressly stated 

 namely, the belief in a general order, in a recurrent 

 regularity or a slow but continuous change and orderly 

 development of the things and events of the world. 

 Science, in the different aspects which we have so far 

 passed in review, tries to give a definite expression to 

 this general Order, to this all-pervading rule and regu- 

 larity. Statistics and the practical use of them limit 

 themselves to the bare fact that such order and regular- 

 ity do exist, though the formula or reason for them 

 may be unknown or unknowable. It may also be well 

 to note that this belief in a general order is common to 

 all schools of thought, be they ancient or modern, pagan 

 or Christian, religious or scientific, optimist or pessimist. 

 The dictum, " est modus in rebus," is the fundamental 

 axiom of all thought and all practice ; and the statistical 

 view of nature, which merely puts into form and figure 

 this general axiom or truism, has accordingly been ap- 

 pealed to as much by those who uphold a divine order 

 of things as by others who insist on a natural or 

 mechanical one. In the school of Quetelet, through 

 whose influence statistical knowledge has been so 

 greatly furthered in the course of our century, the 

 regular recurrence of events and the stability of large 

 numbers has been sometimes used as the basis for a 

 fatalistic and pessimistic view, whereas nearly a hundred 

 years before Quetelet, statistics had been elaborated by 



