INTRODUCTORY EXPLANATION. 27 



I. All the eleven planets yet discovered move in one 

 direction round the sun. 



II. Taking one of them (the earth) as a standard, the 

 sum of all the angles made by the planes of the orbits of 

 the remaining ten with the plane of the earth's orbit, is 

 less than a right angle, whereas it might by possibility 

 have been ten right angles. 



Now it will hereafter be shewn that causes are likely 

 or unlikely, just in the same proportion that it is likely 

 or unlikely that observed events should follow from them. 

 The most probable cause is that from which the observed 

 event could most easily have arisen. Taking it then as 

 certain that the preceding phenomena would have fol- 

 lowed from design, if such had existed, seeing that they 

 are absolutely necessary, ceteris manentibus, to the main- 

 tenance of a system which that design, if it exist, actu- 

 ally has organised, we proceed to inquire what prospect 

 there would have been of such a concurrence of circum- 

 stances, if a etate of pure chance had been the only ante- 

 cedent. With regard to the sameness of the directions 

 of motion, either of which might have been from west 

 to east, or from east to west, the case is precisely similar 

 to the following : There is a lottery containing 

 black and white balls, from each drawing of which it is 

 as likely a black ball shall arise as a white one ; what 

 is the chance of drawing eleven balls, all white. Answer, 

 2047 to 1 against it. With regard to the other question, 

 our position is this. There is a lottery containing an 

 infinite number of counters marked with all possible dif- 

 ferent angles less than a right angle, in such manner that 

 any angle is as likely to be drawn as another; so that in 

 10 drawings the sum of the angles drawn may be any 

 thing under 10 right angles. What is the chance of 10 

 drawings giving collectively less than 1 right angle ? 

 Answer, ] 0,000,000 to 1 against it. Now what is the 

 chance of both of these events coming together ? An- 

 swer, more than 20,000,000,000 to 1 against it. It is 

 consequently of the same degree of probability that there 

 has been something at work which is not chance, in the 



