SECT. 14.] Modes of establishing the Groups or Series, 89 



include the ordinary problems furnished by games of chance, 

 I as well as those where the dice are loaded and the pence are 

 | not perfect, and also the indefinitely numerous applications 

 of statistics to the various kinds of social phenomena. 



14. The particular view of the deductive character of 

 Probability above discussed, could scarcely have intruded 

 itself into any other examples than those of the nature of 

 games of chance, in which the conditions of occurrence are 

 by comparison few and simple, and are amenable to accurate 

 numerical determination. But a doctrine, which is in reality 

 little else than the same theory in a slightly disguised form, 

 is very prevalent, and has been applied to truths of the most 

 purely empirical character. This doctrine will be best in 

 troduced by a quotation from Laplace. After speaking of 

 the irregularity and uncertainty of nature as it appears at 

 first sight, he goes on to remark that when we look closer we 

 begin to detect &quot;a striking regularity which seems to sug 

 gest a design, and which some have considered a proof of 

 Providence. But, on reflection, it is soon perceived that this 

 regularity is nothing but the development of the respective 

 probabilities of the simple events, which ought to occur more 

 frequently according as they are more probable V 



If this remark had been made about the succession of 

 heads and tails in the throwing up of a penny, it would 

 have been intelligible. It would simply mean this : that the 

 constitution of the body was such that we could anticipate 

 with some confidence what the result would be when it was 

 treated in a certain way, and that experience would justify 

 our anticipation in the long run. But applied as it is in a 

 more general form to the facts of nature, it seems really to 

 have but little meaning in it. Let us test it by an instance. 

 Amidst the irregularity of individual births, we find that the 



1 Essai Philosophiqnc. Ed. 1825, p. 74. 



