THE LOGIC OF CHANCE. 



CHAPTER I. 



ON CERTAIN KINDS OF GROUPS OR SERIES AS THE 

 FOUNDATION OF PROBABILITY. 



1. IT is sometimes not easy to give a clear definition of a 

 science at the outset, so as to set its scope and province before 

 the reader in a few words. In the case of those sciences 

 which are more immediately and directly concerned with 

 what are termed objects, rather than with what are termed 

 processes, this difficulty is not indeed so serious. If the 

 reader is already familiar with the objects, a simple reference 

 to them will give him a tolerably accurate idea of the 

 direction and nature of his studies. Even if he be not 

 familiar with them, they will still be often to some extent 

 connected and associated in his mind by a name, and 

 the mere utterance of the name may thus convey a fair 

 amount of preliminary information. This is more or less 

 the case with many of the natural sciences ; we can often 

 tell the reader beforehand exactly what he is going to study. 

 JBut when a science is concerned, not so much with objects 

 directly, as with processes and laws, or when it takes for the 

 subject of its enquiry some comparatively obscure feature 

 drawn from phenomena which have little or nothing else in 

 common, the difficulty of giving preliminary information 

 becomes greater. Recognized classes of objects have then 

 v. 1 



