between Stars forming Binary or Multiple Groups, 407 



other than accidental? Will, for instance, the position of two 

 pieces (even if they were the only two on the board) occupy- 

 ing adjacent squares, appear to him to be more the result of 

 design than if they occupied opposite corners of the board ? 

 I altogether disbelieve it : and I am disposed to say that even 

 if four, five, or more pieces stood close together, the idea would 

 arise in the mind that they were placed there by some localizing 

 cause, not because mere chance has any distributive tendency 

 which leads us to suspect that it has been interfered with, when 

 we observe a conglomeration, but from the impatience of the 

 mind of causeless phenomena. And since the grouping toge- 

 ther of pieces in one part of the board is a phenomenon striking 

 to the sense and intellect, just as a uniform spacing of them 

 over the board would be also such a phenomenon, the mind 

 hastens to conjecture some cause which may account for that 

 localization, not because the phcenomenon rebels against the laws 

 of hazard, but because it affords a kind of salient point to 

 which the reasoning faculty may attach some threads of argu- 

 ment, however feebly united. Thus, from the belief of causa- 

 tion in the abstract, some faint probability arises in the spec- 

 tator's mind that the arrangement of the pieces in question 

 was not (as it might have been) purely accidental. 



[15.] But now let an experienced chess-player step in. He 

 sees not merely certain pieces in certain places, but, knowing 

 the rules of the game, he can say, almost at a glance, whether 

 the pieces placed before him were placed by design or other- 

 wise, whether, in short, he sees a step of the game. If he 

 does, his estimate of the grouping not being the result of 

 hazard, rises to the very highest degree of probability, and 

 higher in proportion to the number of the pieces and the 

 critical character of the positions. Yet his probable estimate, 

 like the last, is only a relative estimate, incapable of being ex- 

 pressed accurately by numbers : if it were otherwise, the num- 

 bers could only express the impression made by the combina- 

 tion on his own individual mind. 



[16.] I am persuaded that the case of the stars is very similar. 

 A group like the Pleiades attracts notice. It is a phenomenon. 

 The mind hastens to attempt to assign by induction a cause 

 for it. The symmetry of certain nebulous and multiple stars 

 has a similar effect on the reasoning faculty. A star, for ex- 

 ample, exactly in the centre of a nebulous mass nearly circular, 

 has a position neither more nor less probable than any-other 

 position within or without the nebula. It is the inductive bias 

 of every rational mind which thrusts into our reasonings the 

 notion of cause, and forbids us to think that accident might 

 have placed it there as well as anywhere else. A happy and 



