484 THE LIFE OF JAMES I). FORBID. [CHAP. 



sky would (if possible) be that which could alone afford 

 no evidence of causation, or any interference with the 

 laws of "random" a result palpably absurd. 



' (4.) Special collocations, whether (a) distinguished 

 by their symmetry, or () distinguished by an excessive 

 crowding together of stars, or the reverse, inevitably force 

 on the reasoning mind a more or less vague impression 

 of causation, an impression necessarily vague, having 

 nothing absolute, but depending on the previous know- 

 ledge and habits of thought of the individual, therefore 

 incapable of being made the subject of exact (i.e. mathe- 

 matical) reasoning. 



' (5.) The form of error into which those have been 

 led who had stated numerical probabilities against given 

 arrangements of stars being the result of accident, is 

 twofold. First, a confusion between the expectation of 

 a given event in the mind of a person speculating about 

 its occurrence, and an inherent improbability of an event 

 happening in one particular way when there are many 

 ways equally possible. Secondly, a too limited and 

 arbitrary conception of the utterly vague premiss of st;irs 

 being " scattered by mere chance, as it might happen " 

 a statement void of any condition whatever/ 



He next recapitulates in a succinct form some of the 

 preceding arguments, and then proceeds (without naming 

 Herschel as the author in question) to show that ' an 

 ingenious writer in the Edinburgh Review' has repre- 

 sented him as making averments foreign to his thoughts : 

 and has overlooked the precise objections contained 

 in his letter (ante, p. 467), and the precise statements 

 there quoted from Herschel's Astronomy. 'The re- 

 viewer/ he says, * charges me with a singular miscon- 

 ception of the true incidence of the argument from 

 probability. I can only say that my error, if such it 

 be, is one sanctioned by Sir John Herschel, to whom 

 I referred as my authority/ . . . 



1 The necessity of such definite citation has become 

 evident from the misapprehensions to which I have been 

 exposed. If Mitchell's deductions had remained buried 



