CHANCE, AND ITS ELIMINATION. 59 



causation ; that they are neither cause and effect, nor 

 effects of the same cause, nor effects of causes be- 

 tween which there subsists any law of co-existence, 

 nor even effects of the same original collocation of 

 primeval causes. 



If the same casual coincidence never occurred a 

 second time, we should have an easy test for distin- 

 guishing such from the coincidences which are results 

 of a law. As long as the phenomena had been found 

 together only once, so long, unless we knew some 

 more general laws from which the coincidence might 

 have resulted, we could not distinguish it from a 

 casual one; but if it occurred twice, we should know 

 that the phenomena^ so conjoined must be in some 

 way connected through their causes. 



There is, however, no such test. A coincidence 

 may occur again and again, and yet be only casual. 

 Nay, it would be inconsistent with what we know of 

 the order of nature, to doubt that every casual coin- 

 cidence will sooner or later be repeated, as long as the 

 phenomena between which it occurred do not cease to 

 exist, or to be produced. The recurrence, therefore, 

 of the same coincidence more than once, or even its 

 frequent recurrence, does not prove that it is an 

 instance of any law; does not prove that it is not 

 casual, or, in common language, the effect of chance. 



And yet, when a coincidence cannot be deduced 

 from known laws, nor proved by experiment to be 

 itself a case of causation, the frequency of its occur- 

 rence is the only evidence from which we can infer 

 that it is the result of a law. Not, however, its absolute 

 frequency. The question is not whether the coinci- 

 dence occurs often or seldom, in the ordinary sense of 

 those terms ; but whether it occurs more often than 

 chance will account for ; more often than might ration- 



