SECT. 11.] Fallacies. 341 



the case of all the others as well. In other words, if the 

 tosser be dissatisfied at the appearance of the one tail, and 

 wish to cancel it and try his luck again, he must toss up the 

 whole lot of pence again fairly together. In this case, of 

 course, so far from his having a better prospect for the next 

 throw he may think himself in very good luck if he makes 

 again as good a throw as the one he rejected. What he is 

 doing is confounding this case with that in which the throws 

 are really successive. If eleven heads have been tossed up in 

 turn, we are of course within an even chance of getting a 

 twelfth ; but the circumstances are quite different in the 

 instance proposed. 



11. In the above example the error is transparent. 

 But in forming a judgment upon matters of greater com 

 plexity than dice and pence, especially in the case of what are 

 called narrow escapes/ a mistake of an analogous kind is, I 

 apprehend, far from uncommon. A person, for example, who 

 has just experienced a narrow escape will often be filled 

 with surprise and anxiety amounting almost to terror. The 

 event being past, these feelings are, at the time, in strictness 

 inappropriate. If, as is quite possible, they are merely in 

 stinctive, or the result of association, they do not fall within 

 the province of any kind of Logic. If, however, as seems 

 more likely, they partially arise from a supposed transference 

 of ourselves into that point of past time at which the event 

 was just about to happen, and the production by imagina 

 tion of the feelings we should then expect to experience, 

 this process partakes of the nature of an inference, and can 

 be right or wrong. In other words, the alarm may be pro 

 portionate or disproportionate to the amount of danger that 

 might fairly have been reckoned upon in such a hypothetical 

 anticipation. If the supposed transfer were completely 

 carried out, there would be no fallacy ; but it is often very 



