ON THE STATISTICAL VIEW OF NATURE. 571 



view that morals and politics might derive the same 

 benefit from the science of calculation as the physical 

 sciences had already experienced, seems to have been 

 Turgot. To show the importance of this view, Con- 

 dorcet wrote his much quoted but little read essay on 

 the application of analysis to decisions based on the 

 plurality of votes. In his Introduction the author 

 laments that his friend, on whose suggestions he had 

 commenced his work, did not live to see it finished. 1 It 

 would have been interesting to know whether so emi- 

 nent a practical philosopher as Turgot is considered to 

 have been, would have been encouraged by his friend's 

 specimen of political algebra, or whether he would have 

 held the opinion of Mill, who saw in these " appli- 

 cations of the calculus of probabilities . . . the real 

 opprobrium of mathematics." 5 



1 (Loc. cit., p. i.) "Si riiumanite" 

 n'eut pas eu le malheur, longtemps 

 irreparable, de le perdre trop tot, 

 cet ouvrage eut ete moins impar- 

 fait : eclaire par ses conseils, j'aurois 

 vu mieux ou plus loin, et j'aurois 

 avarice" avec plus de confiance des 

 principes qui auroient dtd les sieus. 

 Prive d'un tel guide, il ne me reste 

 qu'a faire a sa meinoire 1'hommage 

 de mon travail, en faisant tous mes 

 efforts pour le rendre moins indigne 

 de 1'amitie' dont il m'honoroit. " 



2 There is no doubt that the 

 writings of Condorcet, through the 

 useless accumulation of formula; 

 with very little substance behind 

 them, contributed to bring the 

 whole theory into discredit. An- 

 other still more eminent contem- 

 porary mathematician, D'Alembert, 

 after having occupied himself at 

 considerable length with problems 

 in probabilities, formed an un- 

 favourable opinion of the usefulness 



of the calculus. Gouraud (quoted 

 \>y Todhunter, p. 293) says : " Quant 

 au reste des mathematiciens, ce ne 

 fut que par le silence ou le de"daiu 

 qu'il repondit aux doutes que 

 d'Alembert s'etait permis d'e"mettre. 

 Mepris injuste et malhabile ou tout 

 le monde avait a perdre et qu'une 

 posteritd moins pr^venue ne devait 

 point sanctionner." It is interest- 

 ing to note that Laplace, in his 

 historical account at the end of his 

 ' Essai Philosophique,' does not 

 refer either to Condorcet or to 

 D'Alembert. J. S. Mill ('Logic,' 

 vol. ii. p. 66) says : " It is obvious, 

 too, that even when the proba- 

 bilities are derived from observation 

 and experiment, a very slight 

 improvement in the data, by better 

 observations, or by taking into 

 fuller consideration the special 

 circumstances of the case, is of more 

 use than the most elaborate appli- 

 cation of the calculus to probabil- 



