SECT. 28.] Induction. 229 



of statistics. The English mortality in Madeira would in 

 stantly become heavier, so far as the Insurance company was 

 concerned, by the loss of all their best lives; whilst the con 

 sumptive statistics (unless all the English consumptives had 

 already been taken for insurance) would be in the same way 

 deteriorated 1 . A slight readjustment therefore of each scale 

 of insurance would then be needed ; this is the disturbance 

 mentioned just above. It must be clearly understood, how 

 ever, that it is not our original statistics which have proved 

 to be inconsistent, but simply that there were practical 

 obstacles to carrying out a system of insurance upon them. 



28. Examples subject to the difficulty now under 

 consideration will doubtless seem perplexing to the student 

 unacquainted with the subject. They are difficult to recon 

 cile with any other view of the science than that insisted on 

 throughout this Essay, viz. that we are only concerned with 

 averages. It will perhaps be urged that there are two 

 different values of the man s life in these cases, and that 

 they cannot both be true. Why not? The value of his 

 life is simply the number of years to which men in his 

 circumstances do, on the average, attain ; we have the man 

 set before us under two different circumstances; what wonder, 

 therefore, that these should offer different averages? In such 

 an objection it is forgotten that we have had to substitute 

 for the unattainable result about the individual, the really 

 attainable result about a set of men as much like him as 

 possible. The difficulty and apparent contradiction only 

 arise when people will try to find some justification for their 

 belief in the individual case. What can we possibly con- 



1 The reason is obvious. The whereas the worst consumptive lives 



healthiest English lives in Madeira there (viz. the English) are now in- 



(viz. the consumptive ones) have now creased in relative numbers, 

 ceased to be reckoned as English; 



