SECT. 2.] Chance, Causation, and Design. 237 



not anything else 1 .&quot; Similar remarks might be quoted from 

 Laplace and others. 



2. In the particular form of the controversy above 

 referred to, and which is mostly found in the region of the 

 natural and physical sciences, the contention that chance 

 and causation are irreconcileable occupies rather a defensive 

 position ; the main fact insisted on being that, whenever in 

 these subjects we may happen to be ignorant of the details 

 we have no warrant for assuming as a consequence that the 

 details are uncaused. But this supposed irreconcileability 

 is sometimes urged in a much more aggressive spirit in refer 

 ence to social enquiries. Here the attempt is often made to 

 prove causation in the details, from the known and admitted 

 regularity in the averages. A considerable amount of con 

 troversy was excited some years ago upon this topic, in great 

 part originated by the vigorous and outspoken support of the 

 necessitarian side by Buckle in his History of Civilization. 



It should be remarked that in these cases the attempt is 

 sometimes made as it were to startle the reader into acqui 

 escence by the singularity of the examples chosen. Instances 

 are selected which, though they possess no greater logical 

 value, are, if one may so express it, emotionally more effective. 

 Every reader of Buckle s History, for instance, will remember 

 the stress which he laid upon the observed fact, that the number 

 of suicides in London remains about the same, year by year ; 

 and he may remember also the sort of panic with which the 

 promulgation of this fact was accompanied in many quarters. 

 So too the way in which Laplace notices that the number of 

 undirected letters annually sent to the Post Office remains 

 about the same, and the comments of Dugald Stewart upon 

 this particular uniformity, seem to imply that they regarded 



1 Essay on Probabilities, p. 114. 



