246 THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENCE. 



cause there are no less than 252 different particular 

 throws which will give this result, when we abstract 

 the difference of order. 



Difficulties arise in the application of the theory from 

 our habitual disregard of slight probabilities. We are 

 obliged practically to accept truths as certain which are 

 nearly so, because it ceases to be worth while to calculate 

 the difference. No punishment could be inflicted if 

 absolutely certain evidence of guilt were required, and as 

 Locke remarks, He that will not stir till he infallibly 

 knows the business he goes about will succeed, will 

 have but little else to do but to sit still and perish. f 

 There is not a moment of our lives when we do not lie 

 under a slight danger of death, or some most terrible fate. 

 There is not a single action of eating, drinking, sitting 

 down, or standing up which has not proved fatal to some 

 person. Several philosophers have tried to assign the 

 limit of the probabilities which we regard as zero ; Buffon 

 named f^Voo* because it is the probability that a man of 

 56 years of age would die the next day, and is practically 

 disregarded. Pascal had remarked that a man would be 

 esteemed a fool for hesitating to accept death when three 

 dice gave sixes twenty times running, if his reward in 

 case of a different result was to be a crown ; but as the 

 chance of death in question is only in-6 60 , or unity divided 

 by a number of 47 places of figures, we may be said 

 every day to incur greater risks for less motives. There 

 is far greater risk of death, for instance, in a game of 

 cricket. 



Nothing is more requisite than to distinguish carefully 

 between the truth of a theory and the truthful application 

 of the theory to actual circumstances. As a general rule, 

 events in nature or art will present a complexity of 



1 Essay on the Human Understanding, bk. IV. ch. 14. i. 



