a?o THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC 



elements of the same complex phenomenon, we regard as &quot; due to 

 chance,&quot; because they are unexplainable, unaccountable, irre 

 ducible to law, by any effort of ours. 



Similarly, there are phenomena whose recurrence is so irregular, 

 arbitrary, uncertain, devoid of any element of uniformity, that we 

 can entertain no hope of tracing the laws according to which their 

 determining causes combine to bring them about. Thus, a homo 

 geneous, cubic die has each of its faces marked with a different 

 number of spots, up to six. In a dozen throws, the three and the 

 five have turned up three times each, the two and the four twice each, 

 the one and the six only once each : no correspondence of the order 

 in which the figures appear, with the arithmetical series, one to six, 

 or with any other known principle or law : no correspondence 

 with the order of results in any other dozen of throws. So, 

 too, the trump in a deal at cards &quot;chances &quot; or &quot;happens &quot; to be 

 the ace of hearts, or the king of diamonds, etc. Such phenomena 

 we describe as matters of &quot; chance &quot;. 



Of course, when we say that a definite occurrence of that sort 

 is the result of &quot;chance,&quot; we do not mean to deny that the actual 

 result was fully and perfectly determined by the whole combina 

 tion of causes that brought it about ; we merely mean that we 

 are unable to see how those causes necessarily determined or 

 brought about the actual occurrence. We fail to see anything 

 either in the die or in our casting of it, in the cards or in our 

 shuffling of them, in the coin or in our tossing of it, to necessitate 

 the turning of the six rather than of the one, of the ace of hearts 

 rather than of any other card of the pack, of the &quot; head &quot; rather 

 than of the &quot;tail &quot; of the coin. So far as we know the nature of 

 all the antecedents in such cases, we see absolutely nothing in the 

 dice or the cards or the coins, or in our manipulation of them, 

 to bring about any one result out of a large number of equally 

 possible alternatives, rather than any other. And yet the fact that 

 this result happened, and not any other, is an all-sufficient proof 

 that there were at work influences which determined the occur 

 rence of it rather than of any other. But all we know about the 

 antecedents is that they must cause some alternative ; and because 

 we do not know which, we say that it &quot;chanced&quot; to occur. 

 Thus, &quot;chance &quot; is a name for our ignorance. 



So, also, the fact that some one particular phenomenon, or part 

 of a phenomenon, accompanies or coincides with some other in 

 time and space throughout our experience this fact too must 



