374 THE BORDERLAND OF SCIENCE. 



Let us revert to our coin-tossers. Let us suppose that 

 the progress of the venture in a given county is made 

 known to a set of betting men in that county ; and 

 that when it becomes known that a person has tossed 

 c head ' twelve times running, the betting men hasten 

 to back the luck of that person. Further, suppose this 

 to happen in every county in England. Now we have 

 seen that these persons are no more likely to toss a 

 thirteenth ' head,' than they are to fail. About half 

 will succeed and about half will fail. Thus about half 

 their backers will win and about half will lose. But 

 the successes of the winners will be widely announced ;. 

 while the mischances of the losers will be concealed. 

 This will happen the like notoriously does happen 

 for two reasons. First, gamblers pay little attention 

 to the misfortunes of their fellows : the professed 

 gambler is utterly selfish, and moreover he hates the 

 sight of misfortune because it unpleasantly reminds 

 him of his own risks. Secondly, losing gamblers do 

 not like their losses to be noised abroad ; they object 

 to having their luck suspected by others, and they are 

 even disposed to blind themselves to their own ill- 

 fortune as far as possible. Thus, the inevitable 

 success of about one half of our coin-tossers would be 

 accompanied inevitably by the success of those who 

 c backed their luck,' and the successes of such backers 

 would be bruited abroad and be quoted as examples ; 

 while the failure of those who had backed the other 

 half (whose luck was about to fail them), would be 

 comparatively unnoticed. Unquestionably the like 



