On the Continuity of Chance 15 



If there has elsewhere been less application of the doctrine 

 of chances, it is either because we have not so fully come to 

 separate the element of chance from the element of law, the 

 accidental errors from the systematic, or else there has been 

 such a complication of conflicting chances as to baffle our 

 powers of analysis. But there is progress all along the line. 

 Increasing delicacy of observation is everywhere bringing the 

 accidental element to light, while at the same time we seem, 

 by Mr. Karl Pierson's laborious analysis and generalization, 

 to have found methods that will revolutionize statistical science. 

 We are enabled to see as never before how much and in what 

 way chance enters into an almost endless variety of phenomena. 



Who, then, would prove that all is certain, all is law, all 

 machinery, that even our wills are forced, has an infinite task 

 before him, even supposing he can overcome the contradiction 

 of .acting on the free-will principle while arguing against it. 



Why not say frankly "here law appears, there chance," and 

 treat each on its own merits, while assuming neither appear- 

 ance as final? Be always ready, that is, both to learn and to 

 unlearn. 



But there is still another point of view; that which our 

 unsuppressible conviction of the will's freedom gives us. 

 Even though we may, with Mr. Huxley, contemplate with sat- 

 isfaction being wound up like a clock to do right (I confess I 

 cannot), yet, when it comes to being forced to do wrong, we 

 are appalled. There seems but one escape: that of a balance 

 of motives secured by chance, that is by influences beyond our 

 ken. If, now and again, the balance seems destroyed, yet may 

 it not in the long run assert itself and give us power to choose 

 whom we will serve? There is "a stream or tendency of 

 things that makes for righteousness" doubtless, but not that 

 forces to righteousness. ^ 



Thus we see what men call chance may be no less than the 

 shadow of the infinite, the eternal, patiently watching, patiently 



145 



