X.] THE THEORY OF PROBABILITY. 215 



Locke remarks, " He that will not stir till he infallibly 

 knows the business he coes about will succeed, will 

 have but little else to do but to sit still and perish." ^ 

 There is not a moment of our lives when we do not lie 

 under a sli<flit danger of death, or some most terrible fate. 

 There is not a sinule action of eating, drinking, sitting 

 down, or standing up, which has not proved fatal to some 

 person. Several ])hilosophers have tried to assign the 

 limit of the probabilities which we regard as zero ; Buffon 

 named -ny.o-^nr) because it is the probability, practically 

 disregarded, that a man of 56 years of age will die the next 

 day. Pascal remarked that a man would be esteemed a 

 fool for hesitating to accept death when three dice gave 

 sixes twenty times running, if his reward in case of a 

 different result was to be a crown ; but as the chance of 

 deatii in question is only i -;- 6''^, or unity divided by 

 a number of 47 places of figures, we may be said to incur 

 greater risks every day for less motives. There is far 

 greater risk of death, for instance, in a game of cricket or 

 a visit to tlie rink. 



Nothing is more requisite than to distinguish carefully 

 between the truth of a theory and the truthful application 

 of the theory to actual circumstances. As a general rule, 

 events in nature and art will present a complexity of 

 relations exceeding our powers of treatment. The intricate 

 action of the mind often intervenes and renders complete 

 analysis hopeless. Tf, for instance, the probability that 

 a marksman shall hit the target in a single shot be i in 

 10, we mi;^ht seem to have no difficulty in calculating 

 the probability of any sucession of hits; thus the ])roba- 

 bility of three successive hits would be one in a thousand. 

 But, in reality, the confidence and exp(!rience derived from 

 the first successful bhot would render a second success 

 more probable. The events are not really independent, 

 and there would generally be a far greater preponderance 

 of runs of ajiparent luck, than a simi)le calculation of 

 probabilities could account for. In some persons, however, 

 a remarkable series of successes will produce a degree of 

 excit^iinenfc rendering continued success almost impossible. 



Attempts to apply the theory of pi-ol)ability to the 



^ Lssay concerning Ilunuin Unde,rstandin<j, bk. iv. cli. 14. § i. 



