51 



stances, without our having reason on that account to infer 

 that it will happen again in those circumstances. This, how- 

 ever, when looked closely into, implies that the enumeration 

 of the circumstances is not complete. Whatever the fact be, 

 since it has occurred once, we may be sure that if all the same 

 circumstances were repeated, it would occur again ; and not 

 only if all, but there is some particular portion of those cir- 

 cumstances, on which the phenomenon is invariably conse- 

 quent. With most of them, however, it is not connected in 

 any permanent manner: its conjunction with those is said 

 to be the effect of chance, to be merely casual. Facts casually 

 conjoined are separately the effects of causes, and therefore 

 of laws ; but of different causes, and causes not connected by 

 any law. 



It is incorrect, then, to say that any phenomenon is pro- 

 duced by chance ; but we may say that two or more phenomena 

 are conjoined by chance, that they coexist or succeed one 

 another only by chance : meaning that they are in no way 

 related through causation ; that they are neither cause and 

 effect, nor effects of the same cause, nor effects of causes be- 

 tween which there subsists any law of coexistence, nor even 

 effects of the same collocation of primeval causes. 



If the same casual coincidence never occurred a second 

 time, we should have an easy test for distinguishing such from 

 the coincidences which are the results of a law. As long as the 

 phenomena had been found together only once, so long, unless 

 we knew some more general laws from which the coincidence 

 might have resulted, we could not distinguish it from a casual 

 one ; but if it occurred twice, we should know that the pheno- 

 mena so conjoined must be in some way connected through 

 their causes. 



There is, however, no such test. A coincidence may occur 

 again and again, and yet be only casual. Nay, it would be 

 inconsistent with what we know of the order of nature, to doubt 

 that every casual coincidence will sooner or later be repeated, 

 as long as the phenomena between which it occurred do not 

 cease to exist, or to be reproduced. The recurrence, therefore, 

 of the same coincidence more than once, or even its frequent 



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