ON THE STATISTICAL VIEW OF NATURE. 555 



of his choice, " Ah, linger still, thou art so fair " ; he 

 can fix and keep the star in the focus of his telescope, 

 or protect the delicate fibre and nerve of a decaying 

 organism from succumbing to the rapid disintegration 

 of organic change. The practical man cannot do this ; 

 he is always and everywhere met by the crowd of facts, 

 by the relentlessly hurrying stream of events. What 

 he requires is grasp of numbers, leaving to the pro- 

 fessional man the knowledge of detail. Thus has arisen 

 the science of large numbers or statistics, 1 and the many 

 methods of which it is possessed. It will form the 

 subject of the present chapter. 



5. 



The science 

 of large 

 numbers. 



1 Gottfried Achenwall (1719- 

 1772) is commonly termed the 

 " father " of statistics. This, how- 

 ever, ia hardly correct, either in 

 relation to teaching or to the 

 practical part of the subject, or even 

 so far as the name is concerned. 

 In connection with administration 

 statistics existed in antiquity. 

 They were taught by the celebrated 

 professor, Conring, the elder con- 

 temporary and rival of Leibniz, 

 and the name occurs in the 

 seventeenth century in the ' Micro- 

 scopium statistic-urn, quo status 

 imperii Romano - Germauici rep- 

 rsesentatur auct. Heleno Politano ' 

 (1672). By Achenwall and his 

 successor, Ludwig August Schlozer 

 (1735-1809), statistics were treated 

 in connection with history. The 

 latter says, " Statistics are history 

 standing still, and history is sta- 

 tistics put in motion." See on 

 this subject, Wegele, ' Geschichte 

 der deutschen Hutoriographie ' 

 (Miinchen, 1885), p. 793 ; also 

 Roscher, ' Geschichte der National- 

 Oekonomik' (ibid., 1874), p. 466. 

 A very valuable and exhaustive 

 account of the etymology and 



gradual change of meaning of the 

 words "statist" and statistics will 

 be found in Dr V. John, 

 'Geschichte der Statistik,' 1. Theil. 

 (Stuttgart, 1884), pp. 3-14. He 

 divides the history of the subject 

 down to Quetelet into that of the 

 " German University Statistics," 

 following in the lines of Conring, 

 Achenwall, and Schlozer, also called 

 the " Gottingen School," and that 

 of statistics as an exact, an 

 enumerative science, which he calls 

 the modern science of statistics. It 

 appears that in English also the 

 two meanings of the word are ex- 

 emplified in the older use of the 

 term "statist" by Shakespeare 

 (" Hamlet," v. 2. ; " Cymbeline, " ii. 

 4.) and Webster, in which sense it 

 meant simply " statesman "; and the 

 modern title ' Statist, ' for a statis- 

 tical and financial periodical. Nor 

 must we forget that England lias in 

 her ' Liber judiciarius seu censualis 

 Willelmi I., regis Anglue,' called 

 ' Domesday - book ' (1083-86), as 

 David Hume says, " the most 

 valuable piece of antiquity pos- 

 sessed by any nation " (' Hist, of 

 England,' chap. iv. ) 



