SECT. 15.] Chance, Causation, and Design. 251 



or coin-collectors, or persons who might have been supposed 

 to have indulged in tossing for sport or for gambling pur 

 poses ? Were the coins new or old ones ? a distinction of 

 this kind would be very pertinent when we were considering 

 the existence of any motive for arranging them the same 

 way uppermost. And so on ; we feel that our statistics are 

 at the mercy of any momentary fragment of information. 



14. But there is another consideration besides this. 

 Not only should we be thus influenced by what may be 

 called external circumstances of a general kind, such as the 

 character and position of the agents, we should also be in 

 fluenced by what we supposed to be the conventional 1 estimate 

 with which this or that particular chance arrangement was 

 then regarded. Thus from time to time as new games of 

 cards become popular new combinations acquire significance : 

 and ^ therefore when the question of design takes the form of 

 possible cheating a knowledge of the current estimate of 

 such combinations becomes exceedingly important. 



15. The full significance of these difficulties will best 

 be apprehended by the discussion of a case which is not 

 fictitious or invented for the purpose, but which has actually 

 given rise to serious dispute. Some years ago Prof. Piazzi 

 Smyth published a work 2 upon the great pyramid of Ghizeh, 

 the general object of which was to show that that building 

 contained, in its magnitude, proportions and contents, a 

 number of almost imperishable natural standards of length, 

 volume, &c. Amongst other things it was determined that 



1 Of course this conventional esti- or seven heads and three tails, &c. 

 mate is nothing different in kind Its distinction only consists in its 

 irorn that which may attach to any almost universal acceptance as re 

 order or succession. Ten heads in markable. 



succession is intrinsically or ob- &amp;gt; Our Inheritance in the Great 



jectively indistinguishable in cha- Pyramid, Ed. m. 1877. 

 racter from alternate heads and tails, 



