58 INDUCTION. 



law ; is an effect of causes, and could have been pre- 

 dicted from a knowledge of the existence of those 

 causes, and from their laws. If I turn up a particular 

 card, that is a consequence of its place in the pack. 

 Its place in the pack was a consequence of the manner 

 in which the cards were shuffled, or of the order in 

 which they were played in the last game; which, 

 again, were the effects of prior causes. At every stage, 

 if we had possessed an accurate knowledge of the 

 causes in existence, it would have been abstractedly 

 possible to foretel the effect. 



An event occurring by chance, may be described 

 as a coincidence from which we have no ground to 

 infer an uniformity: the occurrence of a phenomenon 

 in certain circumstances, without our having reason 

 on that account to infer that it will happen again in 

 those circumstances. This, however, when looked 

 closely into, implies that the enumeration of the cir- 

 cumstances 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 circumstances upon which the phe- 

 nomenon is invariably consequent. 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 produced 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 



