COINCIDENCES, LUCK, CHANCE 



the interpretation or foretelling of the future. And that 

 that literature is dead to-day — dead and gone— is another 

 sign of the spirit of the times. 



I have not, in these stories, given any specimens of 

 geometrical and mathematical coincidences, but those who 

 are familiar with C. Piazzi Smyth's work, ** Our 

 Inheritance in the Great Pyramid," will remember that its 

 whole elaborate argument is based on what appears to be a 

 remarkable string of such. 



The author to read, after you have got through with 

 the book of the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, is A. de 

 Morgan (Prof, of Mathematics) ; especially that rare and 

 racy book, compiled by his widow (principally from letters 

 to **the Athenaeun"), titled ^' A Budget of Paradoxes," 

 and you will see that the coincidences are in the geometry, 

 rather than in the Pyramid, and that in rigid mathematics 

 there are as rich and unexpected fields of relationships as in 

 any other section of nature or life ; but that they have no 

 significance outside that common relationship between all 

 number and form. 



How many coincidences should be linked together to 

 produce on a normal mind the conviction of purpose or 

 design in them, is too large a subject for so brief a paper 

 as this ; yet I observe that the puerile detached collection 

 of alleged single coincidences, forming the main part of 

 Mrs. H. Pott's thick book, "The Promus of Formularies 

 and Elegances," has, on some persons, a stronger influence 

 tending to prove the Baconian authorship of the 

 Shakesperian drama, than has the whole cumulative list 

 got by Dr. J. A. H. Murray (from material prepared for 

 his New English Dictionary), upon " verbs in out." 



In the printed Shakespearian works, " verbs in out" 

 occur at least 54 (I think 56) times. In 38 of these cases 

 Dr. Murray finds no earlier use of such word combinations, 

 and in 9 of these their use is confined to the so-called 

 Shakesperian works— that is no author, of the thousands 



