CHANCE. 69 



of this tenth of a degree, they could have known 

 it beforehand, but the observations were neither 

 sufficiently comprehensive nor sufficiently precise, and 

 that is the reason why it all seems due to the 

 intervention of chance. Here, again, we find the 

 same contrast between a very trifling cause that 

 is inappreciable to the observer, and considerable 

 effects, that are sometimes terrible disasters. 



Let us pass to another example, the distribution of 

 the minor planets on the Zodiac. Their initial 

 longitudes may have had some definite order, but 

 their mean motions were different and they have been 

 revolving for so long that we may say that practically 

 they are distributed bv chance throughout the Zodiac. 

 Ver>.- small initial differences in their distances from 

 the sun, or, what amounts to the same thing, in their 

 mean motions, have resulted in enormous differences 

 in their actual longitudes. A difference of a thousandth 

 part of a second in the mean daily motion will have 

 the effect of a second in three years, a degree in ten 

 thousand years, a whole circumference in three or 

 four millions of years, and what is that beside the 

 time that has elapsed since the minor planets became 

 detached from Laplace's nebula? Here, again, we 

 have a small cause and a great effect, or better, small 

 differences in the cause and great differences in the 

 effect. 



The game of roulette does not take us so far as it 

 might appear from the preceding example. Imagine 

 a needle that can be turned about a pivot on a dial 

 divided into a hundred alternate red and black 

 sections. If the needle stops at a red section we win ; 

 if not, we lose. Clearly, all depends on the initial 



