SECT. 6.] Chance, Causation, and Design. 241 



quence can be admitted as really proved, though it doubtless 

 gams some confirmation from this source. 



6. The nature of the argument against free-will 

 drawn from statistics, at least in the form in which it is very 

 commonly expressed, seems to me exceedingly defective 

 The antecedents and consequents, in the case of our voli 

 tions, must clearly be supposed to be very nearly immediately 

 in succession, if anything approaching to causation is to be 

 established : whereas in statistical enquiries the data are 

 often widely separate, if indeed they do not apply merely 

 to single groups of actions or results. For instance, in the 

 case of the misdirected letters, what it is attempted to prove 

 is that each writer was so much the victim of circumstances 

 use a common but misleading expression) that he could 

 not have done otherwise than he did under his circumstances 

 t really no accumulation of figures to prove that the 

 number of such letters remains the same year by year, can 

 have much bearing upon this doctrine, even though they 

 were accompanied by corresponding figures which should 

 connect the forgetfulness thus indicated with some other 

 characteristics in the writers. So with the number of 

 suicides. If 250 people do, or lately did, annually put an 

 end to themselves in London, the fact, as it thus stands by 

 .tself, may be one of importance to the philanthropist and 

 statesman, but it needs bringing into much closer relation 

 with psychological elements if it is to convince us that the 

 actions of men are always instances of inflexible order. In 

 fact, instead of having secured our A and B here in closest 

 intimacy of succession to one another, to employ the sym 

 bolic notation commonly used in works on Inductive Logic 

 to illustrate the causal connection, we find them sepa 

 rated by a considerable interval ; often indeed we merely 

 have an A or & B by itself. 



16 



