26 ESSAY ON PROBABILITIES. 



perfectly distinct from each other considered as phe- 

 nomena, each of which might have existed without 

 the other, and both tending to the same object, which 

 would have been defeated by the absence of either. 

 Let it also be granted, to fix our ideas, that we admit as 

 proved, a proposition which has a hundred million to one 

 in its favour. 



This being premised, and laying it down as our object 

 to show that the necessary results of the theory of pro- 

 babilities lead to the conclusion that the existence of 

 contrivance is made at least as certain, by means of it, 

 as any other result which can come from it, we proceed 

 to state a consequence : The action of the planets upon 

 each other, and that of the sun upon all (the most cer- 

 tain law of the universe), would not produce a perma- 

 nent * system unless certain other conditions were fulfilled 

 which do not necessarily follow from the law of attrac- 

 tion. The latter might have existed without the former, 

 or the former without the latter, for any thing that we 

 know to the contrary.t Two of these conditions are, 

 that the orbital motions must all be in the same direc- 

 tion, and also, that the inclinations of the planes of these 

 orbits must not be considerable. Granting a planetary sys- 

 tem which is what ours is, in every respect except either 

 of these two, and it is mathematically shown that such 

 a system must go to ruin : its planets could not preserve 

 their distances from the sun. Neither of these phe- 

 nomena can be shown to depend necessarily on the 

 other, or on any law which regulates the system in 

 general. For any thing we know to the contrary, then, 

 they are distinct and independent circumstances of the 

 organisation of the whole. Now let us see what are 

 the phenomena in question : 



* Permanent, not liable so to change as to destroy the organisation of 

 the parts. If the earth could ever approach so near to the sun that all the 

 water should be vaporised, the permanency of the system would be de- 

 stroyed, so far as our planet is concerned 



t The only way in which we can guess any two things to be independent 

 It must be remembered, as a result of the theory, that, ot things perfectly 

 unknown, the probability of their coming to act, when known, against an 

 argument, is counterbalanced by the equal probability of the future dis- 

 covery being on the other side. 



