SECT. 8.] Objective Treatment of Logic. 273 



deficiency of appropriate technical terms. It is doubtless 

 certain that one or other of the two alternatives must happen, 

 but this alternative certainty is not the subject of our con 

 templation ; what we have before us is the single alternative, 

 which is notoriously uncertain. It is this, and this only, 

 which is at present under notice, and whose occurrence has 

 to be estimated. We have surely no right to dignify this 

 with the name of a fact, under any qualifications, when the 

 opposite alternative has claims, not perhaps actually equal to, 

 but at any rate not much inferior to its own. Such language, 

 as already remarked, may be quite right in Inductive logic, 

 where we are only concerned with conjectures of such a high 

 degree of likelihood that their non-occurrence need not be 

 taken into practical account, and which are moreover regard 

 ed as merely temporary. But in Probability the conjecture 

 may have any degree of likelihood about it ; it may be just 

 as likely as the other alternative, nay it may be much less 

 likely. In these latter cases, for instance, if the chances are 

 very much against the man s death, it is surely an abuse of 

 language to speak of the fact of his dying, even though we 

 qualify it by declaring it to be highly improbable. The 

 subject-matter essential to Probability being the uncertain, 

 we can never with propriety employ upon it language which 

 in its original and correct application is only appropriate to 

 what is actually or approximately certain. 



8. It should be remembered also that this state of 

 things, thus characteristic of Probability, is permanent there. 

 So long as they remain under the treatment of that science 

 our conjectures, or whatever we like to call them, never 

 develop into facts. I calculate, for instance, the chance that 

 a die will give ace, or that a man will live beyond a certain 

 age. Such an approximation to knowledge as is thus ac 

 quired is as much as we can ever afterwards hope to get, 

 V. 18 



