The Universe. 39 



without conscious combined intention or governance 

 by an intelligence toward an end ; as when a stray 

 bullet kills a man on the battle-field. It has been 

 asserted that " the elimination of chance is the great 

 triumph of modern science." Huxley also, in one of 

 his epigrammatical sentences said, " Chance and acci- 

 dent are only the aliases of ignorance."* But both 

 writers ignore the fact that chance, like cause, has two 

 distinct meanings,! correlated to two distinct kinds of 

 causes, viz.. without assignable cause, and without 

 assignable intention in the cause ; or an unknown 

 cause and a known but unintentional cause. Every 

 occurrence necessarily results from a cause, but it 

 may either be a chance cause or an intentional cause; 

 it may happen by accident or it may be determined 

 upon by design. For example, a blind beggar wishes 

 to cross the street, but in doing so he is run over by 

 a cab and killed. Was he, we ask, killed intentionally 

 or by chance ? We do not say was he killed without 

 cause, for the fact of the cab-wheel dislocating his 

 neck was sufficient cause to kill him. But if we can 

 prove the absence of intention on the man's part to 

 be killed, and no design on the part of the cabman, 

 the horse, cab, wheel, or paving-stones, to kill him, 

 then the only accurate verdict is, the beggar was 

 killed by chance or sheer accident. 



The presence or absence of intention in natural 



* Introductory Science Primer, p. 1 1 . 



t Chance has two distinct meanings : the first, the absence of assign- 

 able cause ; and the second, the absence of design. Roget's Thesaurus, 



