56 Origin, or Process of Causation of the Series. [CHAR in. 



even to but a few pairs, there would not be much scope 

 left for the collection of statistical tables amongst them. 

 Or to take a less violent supposition, if the numbers 

 in each natural class of objects were much smaller than 

 they are at present, or the differences between their varie 

 ties and sub-species much more marked, the consequent 

 difficulty of extracting from them any sufficient length of 

 statistical tables, though not fatal, might be very serious. 

 A large number of objects in the class, together with that 

 general similarity which entitles the objects to be fairly 

 comprised in one class, seem to be important conditions 

 for the applicability of the theory of Probability to any 

 phenomenon. Something analogous to this excessive paucity 

 of objects in a class would be found in the attempt to 

 apply special Insurance offices to the case of those trades 

 where the numbers are very limited, and the employment 

 so dangerous as to put them in a class by themselves. If 

 an insurance society were started for the workmen in 

 gunpowder mills alone, a premium would have to be charged 

 to avoid possible ruin, so high as to illustrate the extreme 

 paucity of appropriate statistics. 



4. So much (at present) for the objects. If we turn 

 to what we have termed the agencies, we find much the 

 same thing again here. By the adjustment of their relative 

 intensity, and the respective frequency of their occurrence, 

 the total effects which they produce are found to be also 

 tolerably uniform. It is of course conceivable that this 

 should have been otherwise. It might have been found 

 that the second group of conditions so exactly corrected the 

 former as to convert the merely general uniformity into 

 an absolute one; or it might have been found, on the 

 other hand, that the second group should aggravate or 

 disturb the influence of the former to such an extent 



