OPINION AND PROBABILITY 293 



not differ appreciably ; they will oscillate more or less about some mean. 

 Now, mark well what I have said : subject to the influence of the same causes ; 

 so that, therefore, if those causes change, the effects will be likewise modi 

 fied. But, since the laws and principles of religion and morality are the 

 source of the influences in question, I cherish not only the hope, but what you 

 perhaps do not the deepest conviction even, that society can be reformed 

 and ameliorated.&quot; 



&quot; But, you ask, what becomes of free will ? In presence of the facts I am 

 not concerned to debate this much-discussed question, but yet I cannot pass 

 it over in silence, for the simple reason that it seems to me to involve in itself 

 one of the most admirable laws in all creation, a law of conservation which 

 furnishes a new proof of the wisdom of the Creator, a proof, the existence of 

 which you, with your cramped conceptions on the moral organization of man, 

 have been unable even to suspect. To avoid the reproach of denying free 

 will entirely, must we go to the opposite extreme and allow it an absolutely 

 indefinite scope ? Or, in that event, what would have become of the whole 

 race centuries ago, with all the mad follies that have entered the minds of 

 men, and all those evil inclinations that have even as things are desolated 

 society ? Scourges have come and gone, but man and his faculties remain 

 unchanged, at least so far as our observation serves us. And why ? Because 

 the self-same finger that has traced its confines for the ocean has likewise set 

 their limits to man s turbulent passions, and the self-same voice has com 

 manded both : thus far you shall go but no farther. When we have to make 

 up our minds about the simplest matter, do we not find ourselves under the 

 influence of our habits, and our needs, and our social conditions and relations, 

 and of a whole crowd of conflicting motives which drag us to the one side 

 and to the other ? Nay, so strong are those influences that we have no hesi 

 tation in predicting, even about people whom we know but slightly, or not at 

 all, what decision they are going to take. Why those innumerable forecasts 

 and guesses you are making every day of your life, if you are not convinced 

 beforehand in each particular case that the influence of inherited character 

 and motives, etc., and not free will itself, will determine the issue ? Looking 

 out on the world a priori you give this free will the very widest latitude ; but, 

 when you pass from theory to practice, and talk of what is going on perpet 

 ually around you, you flatly contradict your a priori self by making your pre 

 dictions about individuals ! Yes, about individuals, in whom motives, etc., 

 can oscillate to such a degree that it would be against all the principles of the 

 theory of probabilities to take them as data for the calculus, or to base even 

 the slightest inductions upon them.&quot; l 



WELTON, Logic, ii., pp. 165-80. CLARKE, Logic, pp. 356-424 sqq. 

 ZIGLIARA, Summa Philosophica, i. (42). MELLONE, op. cit., pp. 251-61. 

 JOSEPH, Logic, pp. 323. KEYNES, Formal Logic, p. 367. VENN, Logic of 

 Chance, passim. JOYCE, Logic, pt. ii., chap, xxiii. BORDEN P. BOWNE, 

 Theory of Thought and Knowledge, pp. 178 sqq. MERCIER, Logique, pp. 

 350-70. GREISE, La Statistique, QuETELET, Sy steme sociale. Cf. works 

 mentioned, p. 269, n. 



1 QUTELET, Etudes sur Vhomme, pp. ii, 12. For Qutelet s attitude towards 

 free will, cf. LOTTIN, Le libre arbitre et les lots sociologiques, in the Revue Nio-scol- 

 astique, November, 1911 ; QUETELBT, Statisticien et sociologue (Louvain, 1912). 



