INTRODUCTORY EXPLANATION. gg 



events to chance. Various modifications of this asser- 

 tion present themselves, but they may all be referred 

 either to that just made, or to a tendency argument of 

 the same character. All the sciences have had to 

 encounter this aspersion, each in its turn ; but it is to be 

 remarked, that philosophy and philosophers have always 

 been charged with the worst thing going. The believers 

 in sorcery never failed to attribute an intimate connection 

 with infernal spirits to all who investigated nature in 

 any form : the believers in anti-deism follow in their 

 steps. There is in the proposition above mentioned, a 

 shifting of the meaning of terms : it has been customary 

 to designate anti-deism as the opinion that the world was 

 made by chance, meaning, without any law or purpose 

 existing ; but the word chance *, in the acceptation of 

 probability, refers to events of which the law or purpose 

 is not visible. Thus a great part of the application of 

 this subject has been destroyed by successive discoveries. 

 When the observatory at Greenwich was founded, the 

 chance errors of observation were large in the fixed stars. 

 Nothing could be said but that there was a deviation 

 which appeared of one sort in one observation, and of 

 another in another, without visible law or order. Brad- 

 ley's discoveries removed much of this, that is, pointed 

 out law where law was not seen to exist before. Im- 

 provement of instruments and methods of observation 

 has still more distinguished the error into parts with a 

 visible, and parts with an invisible, cause. As an 

 answer to the species of argument employed, nothing 

 more is necessary : those who can, may consider this 

 science as not bearing on religion, either in one way 

 or the other, so far as anything in the preceding argu- 

 ment is concerned, or in the explanation which is no 

 more than necessary for an answer. But there is a view 

 of the subject, and that one most indispensable, which 



* Generally speaking, the abstract singular term chance has the anti- 

 delstic meaning, while the plural chances is used for the several possibilities 

 of an event happening. Thus Hume says : '* Though there be no such 



thing as chance in the world there is certainly a probability which 



arises from a superiority of chances." 



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