OPINION AND PROBABILITY 287 



country. Yet, not quite equal : the male births have been found 

 to exceed the female in the ratio of between 104 and 108 males 

 to 100 females. Now those remarkable facts, that the numbers 

 of births of each sex are practically equal, that there is a slight 

 preponderance in the number of male births, and that this is 

 found to hold good of every race, north and south, east and west, 

 in town and country, among rich and poor alike, those facts are 

 surely due to the operation of some undiscovered laws of nature. 

 For such a constant persistence of this remarkable ratio, there 

 must be a sufficient reason in the nature of the antecedents them 

 selves of those births, even though we have not the slightest 

 suspicion as to what the natural properties may be to whose 

 operation, in the antecedents, those uniformities are due. 



All we can do in such cases is to note and observe carefully 

 all the circumstances that we may suspect of having any possible 

 influence in determining the nature of the recurring phenomenon. 

 If, going a step further, we try to investigate the concurrence of 

 those circumstances, their variation, the isolated influence of each, 

 we are entering on the employment of the &quot; inductive methods&quot;. 

 As soon as some observer detects, amongst all those chaotic 

 surroundings, certain elements which he supposes to be the con 

 stant, necessary antecedents of the phenomenon in question, he 

 makes a scientific hypothesis. The verification of this hypo 

 thesis will be the work of induction proper. 



By statistics, therefore, we make a simple enumeration of the 

 phenomena to be explained, we reach rough, empirical general 

 izations, which suggest hypotheses that may be later on erected 

 into natural laws for the explanation of those phenomena. From 

 statistics we often, therefore, obtain suggestions or indications of 

 the laws underlying complex phenomena, and whose existence 

 had been hitherto unsuspected. 



The value of statistics must not, however, be overestimated. 

 When we are investigating the nature and causes of things and 

 events in the natural and social sciences, we are face to face with 

 facts. In statistics about those events we are brought face to 

 face with syntheses. The statistician must regard his figures as a 

 sort of symbol, whose character and significance are more or less 

 enigmatic; and he must diligently seek out all the probable 

 causes of the facts he has symbolized before him, with a view to 

 their scientific explanation. 1 



1 C/. LIESSE, La statistique, p. 49. 



