92 Modes of establishing the Groups or Series. [CHAP. iv. 



which this theorem is sometimes exposed, we should regard 

 it as one of the last remaining relics of Realism, which after 

 being banished elsewhere still manages to linger in the re 

 mote province of Probability. It would be an illustration of 

 the inveterate tendency to objectify our conceptions, even in 

 cases where the conceptions had no right to exist at all. A 

 uniformity is observed ; sometimes, as in games of chance, it 

 is found to be so connected with the physical constitution of 

 the bodies employed as to be capable of being inferred be 

 forehand ; though even here the connection is by no means 

 so necessary as is commonly supposed, owing to the fact that 

 in addition to these bodies themselves we have also to take 

 into account their relation to the agencies which influence 

 them. This constitution is then converted into an objective 

 probability , supposed to develope into the sequence which 

 exhibits the uniformity. Finally, this very questionable ob 

 jective probability is assumed to exist, with the same faculty 

 of development, in all the cases in which uniformity is ob 

 served, however little resemblance there may be between 

 these and games of chance. 



17. How utterly inappropriate any such conception is 

 in most of the cases in which we find statistical uniformity, 

 will be obvious on a moment s consideration. The observed 

 phenomena are generally the product, in these cases, of very 

 numerous and complicated antecedents. The number of 

 crimes, for instance, annually committed in any society, is a 

 function amongst other things, of the strictness of the law, 

 the morality of the people, their social condition, and the 

 vigilance of the police, each of these elements being in itself 

 almost infinitely complex. Now, as a result of all these 

 agencies, there is some degree of uniformity ; but what has 

 been called above the change of type, which it sooner or 

 later tends to display, is unmistakeable. The average annual 



