482 THE LIFE OF JAMES D. FORBES. [CHAP. 



general propositions can be affirmed about them, or, 

 which is again the same thing, what law or laws they 

 fulfil. However the stars had been fixed in the visible 

 heavens, each of them must have been fixed there by an 

 adequate cause, fixing it just where it is. " Random 

 scattering " is, to use Bacon's words, " nomen rei quse 

 non est, aut confusae et male terminate." The question 

 is, Do the phenomena suggest to us the idea that the 

 causes which placed the stars as they are, are connected 

 with certain regions of the sky rather than with others ? 

 If e.g. all the stars lay between the tropics, there could 

 be no doubt as to the answer. As it is, there is a certain 

 presumption from the observed lists of double stars. 

 But in the first place this presumption does not admit 

 of evaluation no presumption does : and secondly, if it 

 did, the evaluation could only relate to the phenomena, 

 viz., to the apparent places of the luminous points 

 call stars. If we divide space into a multitude of 

 cones whose vertices are in the observer's eye, there 

 would, according to the probabilitarians, be a numerical 

 expression of the presumption that certain of these cones 

 favour the existence of stars rather than others. Ikit 

 while the earth was supposed the centre of the universe, 

 people would have been contented to say that stars 

 tended to lie in rays converging towards it. No one 

 now would offer this explanation ; but no one, on the 

 other hand, gives a numerical estimate of its improba- 

 bility. And yet it is only because we reject it that 

 the supposed calculable presumption in favour of a ten- 

 dency in the stars to apparent nearness leads us to any 

 inference as to their real nearness. Nevertheless the 

 transition from apparent nearness to real nearnes 

 the very essence of the matter in dispute, 



' Do not think that any of this or of my marginal 

 notes is in the nature of contradiction or even critic- 

 More like the latter is a remark I will add, that the, 

 phrase " calculus of probabilities " seems objectionable (it 

 occurs in the last part which reached me since I be 

 to write) : the word " calculus " in mathematics seem 



