240 Chance, Causation, and Design. [CHAP. x. 



of necessary sequences in the various phenomena which com 

 pose what we call a season. So with cards and dice ; almost 

 every gambler must have recognized that judgment and 

 foresight are of use in the long run, but writers on chance 

 seem to think that gamblers need a good deal of reasoning to 

 convince them that each separate throw is in its nature es 

 sentially predictable. 



5. In its application to moral and social subjects, 

 what gives this controversy its main interest is its real or 

 supposed bearing upon the vexed question of the freedom 

 of the will; for in this region Causation, and Fatalism or 

 Necessitarianism, are regarded as one and the same thing. 



Here, as in the last case, that wide and somewhat vague 

 kind of regularity that we have called Uniformity, must be 

 admitted as a notorious fact. Statistics have put it out of 

 the power of any reasonably informed person to feel any 

 hesitation upon this point. Some idea has already been 

 gained, in the earlier chapters, of the nature and amount 

 of the evidence which might be furnished of this fact, and 

 any quantity more might be supplied from the works of 

 professed writers upon the subject. If, therefore, Free-will be 

 so interpreted as to imply such essential irregularity as defies 

 prediction both in the average, and also in the single case, 

 then the negation of free-will follows, not as a remote logical 

 consequence, but as an obvious inference from indisputable 

 facts of experience. 



Few persons, however, would go so far as to interpret it 

 in this sense. All that troubles them is the fear that some 

 how this general regularity may be found to carry with it 

 causation, certainly in the sense of regular invariable se 

 quence, and probably also with the further association of 

 compulsion. Rejecting the latter association as utterly 

 unphilosophical, I cannot even see that the former conse- 



