SECT. 11.] Chance, Causation, and Design. 247 



trusted to what we call chance, or whether it employed what 

 we call design. 



The reader must clearly understand that we are not now 

 discussing the mere question of fact whether a certain 

 assigned arrangement is what we call a chance one. This, 

 as was fully pointed out in the fourth chapter, can be settled 

 by mere inspection, provided the materials are extensive 

 enough. What we are now proposing to do is to carry on 

 the enquiry from the point at which we then had to leave it 

 off, by solving the question, Given a certain arrangement, is 

 it more likely that this was produced by design, or by some 

 of the methods commonly called chance methods ? The dis 

 tinction will be obvious if we revert to the succession of 

 figures which constitute the ratio TT. As I have said, this 

 arrangement, regarded as a mere succession of digits, appears 

 to fulfil perfectly the characteristics of a chance arrange 

 ment. If we were to omit the first four or five digits, 

 which are familiar to most of us, we might safely defy any 

 one to whom it was shown to say that it was not got at by 

 simply drawing figures from a bag. He might look at it for 

 his whole life without detecting that it was anything but the 

 result of such a chance selection. And rightly so, because 

 regarded as a mere arrangement it is a chance one : it fulfils 

 all the requirements of such an arrangement 1 . The question 



Doubts have been expressed means. If such a question were 



about the truly random character asked in relation to any unusual 



of the digits in this case (v. De divergence from the a priori chance 



Morgan, Budget of Paradoxes, p. in a case of throwing dice, say, we 



291), and Jevons has gone so far as should probably substitute for it the 



to ask (Principles of Science, p. 529), following, as being more appropriate 



&quot;Why should the value of TT, when to our science: Assign the degree 



expressed to a great number of of improbability of the event in 



figures, contain the digit 7 much less question; i.e. its statistical rarity, 



frequently than any other digit!&quot; And we should then proceed to 



I do not quite understand what this judge, in the way indicated in the 



