118 ESSAY ON PROBABILITIES. 



sons, yet the larger the number, the greater will be the 

 extremes of fluctuation. 



Now it must be noticed, that this variation is the 

 thing observed not on one side only, but on both. 

 For every one who is lucky at cards, there is another who 

 is unlucky. It would be, indeed, such a sort of mystery 

 as that which I am endeavouring to explain, if the ex- 

 ceptions to common luck were all on one side, or if there 

 were no such thing at all as uncommon luck, or only in 

 very few instances. This latter would be the same sort 

 of phenomenon as we should see if a halfpenny gave 

 head and tail alternately through an enormous recurrence 

 of throws. The event observed is precisely that which 

 might have been expected beforehand. If by thinking 

 mysteriously of the fluctuations of luck which are 

 observed in comparing the fortunes of individuals, 

 any reader should mean to imply that the alternative, 

 namely, slight individual departure from the average, 

 would not have been mysterious, he is in a singular 

 error. The state of things which he would regard with 

 no wonder would be an apparent interference with the 

 material world on the part of its governor, without the 

 intermediate agency of any second causes ; that is, 

 something resembling a miracle. For though the phi- 

 losopher, in such a case, would suspect an intermediate 

 cause, and endeavour to discover it, this consideration 

 does not enter in to the view of people in general. When 

 the world wonders, whether at one side or another of a 

 question of probabilities, it is at the want of any ap- 

 parent physical or moral reason : on which account they 

 refer It to the Creator in a manner different from that 

 in which they refer what they call usual occurrences. 



The law of individual cases is, that there shall be 

 marked differences ; of the masses, that there shall be 

 great approach to uniformity. There are a hundred 

 years in which, and hundreds of diseases by which, 

 any individual who is born may die : a lottery, which 

 should contain one ticket for every disorder, repeated as 

 often as there are years of age in which it has been 



