FALLACIES OF OBSERVATION . 34)3 



though every season affords to them numerous cases of 

 completely erroneous prediction ; but as every season also 

 furnishes some cases in which the prediction is fulfilled, this 

 is enough to keep up the credit of the prophet, with people 

 who do not reflect on the number of instances requisite for 

 what we have called, in our inductive terminology, the Elimi 

 nation of Chance ; since a certain number of casual coinci 

 dences not only may but will happen, between any two 

 unconnected events. 



Coleridge, in one of the essays in the Friend, has illus 

 trated the matter we are now considering, in discussing the 

 origin of a proverb, &quot; which, differently worded, is to be found 

 in all the languages of Europe,&quot; viz. &quot;Fortune favours fools.&quot; 

 He ascribes it partly to the &quot;tendency to exaggerate all 

 effects that seem disproportionate to their visible cause, and 

 all circumstances that are in any way strongly contrasted 

 with our notions of the persons under them.&quot; Omitting some 

 explanations which would refer the error to mal-observation, 

 or to the other species of non-observation (that of circum 

 stances), I take up the quotation farther on. &quot; Unforeseen 

 coincidences may have greatly helped a man, yet if they have 

 done for him only what possibly from his own abilities he 

 might have effected for himself, his good luck will excite less 

 attention, and the instances be less remembered. That clever 

 men should attain their objects seems natural, and we neglect 

 the circumstances that perhaps produced that success of them 

 selves, without the intervention of skill or foresight ; but we 

 dwell on the fact and remember it, as something strange, 

 when the same happens to a weak or ignorant man. So too, 

 though the latter should fail in his undertakings from con 

 currences that might have happened to the wisest man, yet 

 his failure being no more than might have been expected and 

 accounted for from his folly, it lays no hold on our attention, 

 but fleets away among the other undistinguished waves in which 

 the stream of ordinary life murmurs by us, and is forgotten. 

 Had it been as true as it was notoriously false, that those 

 all-embracing discoveries, which have shed a dawn of science 

 on the art of chemistry, and give no obscure promise of some 



