362 Fallacies. [CHAP. xiv. 



time before, and will be ever after. The preceding para 

 graph explains how it is that these occasional disturbances 

 in the average become neutralized in the long run. 



29. (3) There are other cases which, though rare, 

 are by no means unknown, in which such an inference as 

 that obtained from the Rule of Succession would be the di 

 rect reverse of the truth. The oftener a thing happens, it 

 may be, the more unlikely it is to happen again. This is the 

 case whenever we are drawing things from a limited source 

 (as balls from a bag without replacing them), or whenever 

 the act of repetition itself tends to prevent the succession 

 (as in giving false alarms). 



I am quite ready to admit that we believe the results de 

 scribed in the last two classes on the strength of some such 

 general Inductive rule, or rather principle, as that involved 

 in the first. But it would be a great error to confound this 

 with an admission of the validity of the rule in each special 

 instance. We are speaking about the application of the rule 

 to individual cases, or classes of cases ; this is quite a dis 

 tinct thing, as was pointed out in a previous chapter, from 

 giving the grounds on which we rest the rule itself. If a 

 man were to lay it down as a universal rule, that the testi 

 mony of all persons was to be believed, and we adduced an 

 instance of a man having lied, it would not be considered 

 that he saved his rule by showing that we believed that it 

 was a lie on the word of other persons. But it is perfectly 

 consistent to give as a merely general, but not universal, 

 rule, that the testimony of men is credible ; then to separate 

 off a second class of men whose word is not to be trusted, 

 and finally, if any one wants to know our ground for the 

 second rule, to rest it upon the first. If we were speaking 

 of necessary laws, such a conflict as this would be as 

 hopeless as the old Cretan puzzle in logic ; but in in- 



