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



both, except of course such as are taken for granted to be 

 inoperative. In such an application it seems that the word 

 casual is not used in antithesis to causal or to designed , 

 but rather to that broader conception of order or regularity 

 to which I should apply the term Uniformity. The casual 

 coincidence is one which we cannot bring under any special 

 generalization; certain, probable, or even plausible. 



A slightly different way of expressing this distinction is 

 to regard these mere coincidences as being simply cases in 

 point of independent events, in the sense in which in 

 dependence was described in a former chapter. We saw 

 that any two events, A and J5, were so described when each 

 happens with precisely the same relative statistical frequency 

 whether the other happens or not. This state of things 

 seems to hold good of the successions of heads and tails in 

 tossing coins, as in that of male and female births in a 

 town, or that of the digits in many mathematical tables. 

 Thus we suppose that when men are picked up in the street 

 and taken into a house to die, there will not be in the long 

 run any preferential selection for or against the house in 

 which they were born. And all that we necessarily mean to 

 claim when we deny of such an occurrence, in any particular 

 case, that it is a mere coincidence, is that that particular 

 case must be taken out of the common list and transferred 

 to one in which there is some such preferential selection. 



11. III. The next problem is a somewhat more in 

 tricate one, and will therefore require rather careful sub 

 division. It involves the antithesis between Chance and 

 Design. That is, we are not now (as in the preceding case) 

 considering objects in their physical aspect alone, and taking 

 account only of the relative frequency of their coexistence or 

 sequence ; but we are considering the agency by which they 

 are produced, and we are enquiring whether that agency 



