OPINION AND PROBABILITY 271 



have its sufficient reason, even though we may fail to see it. We 

 can see no connexion between the causes of each. But we are 

 forced to think that if our minds were able to analyse fully, and 

 to trace back clearly to their sources, each set of causes, we should 

 necessarily find between them some connexion capable of account 

 ing for the coincidence. In other words, a mind which under 

 stood all things, all reality, all causes, fully and adequately, would 

 see not only the reasons and causes of the isolated elements them 

 selves, but also of the interrelations and connexions of concomi 

 tance or sequence between all those elements ; and would see how 

 all those causes conspired, each according to its nature, and to the 

 law of its own activity, to produce each of the individual events 

 that appear to our limited intelligences so irregular, so devoid of 

 order, so incapable of being known scientifically, or reduced to taw. 1 



We are forced to those conclusions on the ground that every 

 event has a cause ; that the real world is knowable, intelligible, 

 rational, or, in other words, that it offers an ultimate sufficient 

 reason, in explanation of every element and of every coincidence 

 of elements, to a mind capable of comprehending it. It is easy 

 to understand, therefore, that for an Omniscient Intelligence there 

 can be no such thing as chance : the sufficient reason of every 

 event is fully discerned by such an intelligence in the totality of 

 its causes. But such perfect knowledge is for us an unattainable 

 ideal, on account of the limitations of our minds confronted with 

 the complexity of the real world. Not to speak of the self-deter 

 mining activity of the human will, or of the conscious causality of 

 the animal kingdom, or of vital activities in the organic world, 

 even physical causes in the inorganic kingdom are so complex and 

 hidden in their combinations that we can never hope to attain to 

 such a knowledge of them as will enable us to dispense with the 

 concept of &quot; chance &quot; (267). 



But even though for an Omniscient Intelligence there can be 

 no such thing as chance, and even though the concept has its 

 origin in the finiteness of our minds, yet it cannot be regarded 

 as a purely subjective concept ; for the ignorance whence it springs 

 has a very real and objective foundation in the complexity and 

 vastness of that world which the finite human mind is ever trying 

 to understand. 



Mr. Welton, understanding by &quot; cause &quot; the &quot; sum-total of the determining 

 conditions,&quot; gives the following account of the concept of chance. 2 &quot; When in 

 1 VENN, of. cil., ibid. * Logic, vol. ii., p. 165. 



