228 



KNO^A^LEDGE ♦ 



[August 1, 1887. 



in which Lenox, speaking of Macbeth's attempt to 6x 

 Duncan's murder on the princes, Duncan's sons, says : — 



Who cannot want the thought how monstrous 

 It was for Malcolm and for Donalbain 

 To kill their gracious father ? 



This, say the commentatois, sliould clearly have been, 

 "Who can want the thought V and a score or so of sug- 

 gested changes have been proffered. In reality it seems 

 clear Shakespeare wrote the passage just as it stands. Nor 

 does the simple meaning of the words seem unnatural or 

 farfetched. " Who is there" so unapt to think justly that 

 he cannot (that as it were, he is not canny enough to) wish 

 to entertain the thought that it was most monstrous for the 

 princes to kill their father, though we as courtiers m^ist not 

 think in that way. Of course, this way of speaking is a 

 trifle strange, but then the whole of Lenox's speech is 

 strangely toned. " 'Twould have angered any heart alive 

 to hear the men deny 't," he says of the grooms, whom 

 Macbeth accused of the murder and killed — a quaint way of 

 indicating his own opinion that Macbeth murdered them 

 that they might have no chance of denying the charge, and 

 so throwinw the guilt on him. 



THE 



SATURDAY REVIEW" ON LUCK. 



By Richard A. Proctor. 



' We " have the receipt of fern-seed; "we" walk invisible; — 

 as in a castle "cocksure." — Shakespe^EB. 



HE Saturday Review informs me that my 

 little book, " Chance and Luck," does all 

 that I hoped it would do, all that I wanted ; 

 nor do I feel intense sorrow when I learn 

 from the same infallible .source that my book 

 fails to achieve a result which no man in 

 his senses would ever hope to accomplish. 

 I strove to show those who are not wholly 

 foolish the folly of gambling and speculation by presenting, 

 as a matter of simjsle evidence, the risks to which they 

 expose themselves, and this, the Saturdai/ Review condescends 

 to tell me, I have done satisfactorily. " Mr. Proctor is 

 valuable in his handling of ' martingales,' in his refutation 

 of the incalculably mischievous doctrine of the 'maturity of 

 the chances ' ; in one particular point Mr. Proctor comes 

 out in a way that if not novel is ceitainly not common " ; 

 moreover, " some of his demonstrations, such as that of the 

 danger of certain popular kinds of Stock Exchange gam- 

 bling and tlie like, are decidedly useful." 



But, surgit amari aliquid, in a Saturday Revieiv 

 critique, " Certain old fallacies of the mathematical expos- 

 tulator with those who gamble " are " as rife as ever in Mr. 

 Proctor's work " ; perhaps even " they are more rife than 

 ever, owing to Mr. Proctor's well-known ' cocksureness,' and 

 his constitutional inability to conceive that any one who 

 differs with {sic) him can possibly be right." 



In passing, though far from me be the presumption of 

 imagining that a Saturday Reviewer can possibly be mistaken, 

 I have been so much in the habit of doubting my own con- 

 clusions — so careful in lectures, essays, and books to suggest 

 caution and introduce again and again expressions of doubt 

 — that I rather wonder how I come to be well known for 

 " cocksureness." I know the Hampdens and Parallaxes, 

 against whom I have had to maintain the cocksureness of 

 certain scientific theories which are not mine, think me 

 "cocksure " to a degree. But I doubt if even a Saturday 

 Reviewer, in one of his most rampant moods, could point to 

 a case in which I have been "cocksure" about anything 



not admitting of mathematical demonstration — like the 

 Copernican theory on the larger scale and the solar theory 

 of tlie corona, or the selections of stations for observing 

 Venus transits, on the smaller. A reviewer, however, who 

 expostulates with all " mathematical expostulators," and 

 that, too, about matters purely mathematical, ought to know 

 a good deal about cocksureness* Indeed, one would be 

 disposed to exclaim just here, were not the quotation some- 

 what musty, Quis tulerit Oracchos de seditione qiierentes'i 

 If a Saturday Revieui critic can be capped for cocksureness, 

 where in creation is the cocksure customer who can cap 

 him? 



This, however, is a digression. 



The modest reviewer goes on to remark that, like all the 

 mathematicians whom he ever knew to discourse on chance 

 and luck, " Mr. Proctor appears to be under a delusion as to 

 the actual meaning of the notion — the superstition, if he 

 likes — of luck." (Of course it is not conceivable that all the 

 mathematicians may bo right, and the Saturday Revievi 

 mistaken, about this notion or superstition.) Where I and 

 all the mathematicians have gone wrong, it appears, is in 

 overlooking the fact that the man who buys a ticket in a 

 lottery, or wagers money on a horserace, does it because he 

 has a chance of getting a large sum by risking a small one, 

 and is not troubled by the circumstance that he has to pay 

 more than the true mathematical value of his chance. 

 " Stranger," said a western farmer to a man who reasoned 

 with his son about the folly of intemperance, " your argey- 

 ments air all right, and I ain't no fault to find with the 

 way you put 'em, ef you was a reasoning with any one else; 

 where you slip up is, you ain't nary a notion what a 

 doggoned fool you're a talking to." That farmer, though, 

 probably knew his son better than the temperance man did; 

 whereas I think I show in my book a tolerably clear 

 apineciation of the folly of gamblers. Again and again I 

 dwell on the very point on which the Saturday Review 

 insists, rightly enough, except in jiretending to correct 

 me about it. The demoralisation on which I dwell so 

 persistently throughout my book is most clearly shown by 

 the very circumstxnce that men bite so blindly when ofl'ered 

 a chance of a large prize for a small sum risked. " Gambling," 

 says the Saturday Ri'view, "is ju.stified of her children," 

 because the chances of growing rich are not offered them at 

 mathematical odds, though if they were plentiful at those 

 odds " Mr. Proctor would be right in denouncing the folly 

 of those who take them at other " odds. But, as a matter 

 of fact, I have not denounced the folly of those who take 

 chances at unfair odds, but the iniquity of those who offer 

 them ; and I have urged as the chief reason of my denuncia- 

 tion that, in so doing, the rascals take advantage of that 

 very weakness which the Saturday Revieui says I overlook. 



Mr. Richard Babley, better known as " Mr. Dick," when 

 asked to explain a certain piece of folly, said he supposed it 

 was done " for pleasure." The Saturday Revieio explains 

 with equal simplicity that gamblers play their foolish tricks 

 for profit. But Mr. Dick was a little crazed ; a Saturday 

 Review critic should know better. 



My critic says " in vain " do mathematicians show that in 

 a series of mathematically equal chances some must re- 

 peatedly win largely and others as repeatedly lose. A man 

 might accept this, it seems, and yet be a firm believer in 

 luck and a confirmed gambler. Of course he might ; there 

 is no limit to the possible inconsistencies and incongruities 

 of gambling. Yet even such a fool as my critic imagines 



* If I repeat this hateful word it is perhaps chiefly because the 

 Satiirdai/ Jieview attributes to me "crudity of phrase," and I want 

 to show how curiously crude is my critic's own phraseology. It is 

 a compliment to be corrected for crudity of phrase by a writer of 

 so strange a taste in such matters. 



