ORIGIN OF SOME GENERAL ERRORS. 821 



sciousness the ordinary train of associations is formed, and the 

 judgment corresponds with what is correct in most cases. There 

 is, therefore, no precise limit between instinctive actions and con- 

 scious thought ; for every one can observe in his own mind that 

 thought rests considerably on phenomena of association. An ele- 

 vated intelligence is, however, distinguished from an inferior one 

 by its richness in associations. The faculty of transposing the 

 elements of one complexus of observations into another, the possi- 

 bility of making a new combination, and the wealth of associa- 

 tions, are prime factors in determining the degree of intelligence. 

 A large proportion of the mistakes to which we are liable origi- 

 nate in this kind of instinctive succession of associations usually 

 correct and effective, in which associations important to the par- 

 ticular case are wanting. In other words, they arise from the as- 

 sociation of the habitual with the omission of the special. 



The thought can be illustrated by the citation of a few wide- 

 spread logical errors. Where lotteries are drawn, the lists of the 

 drawings are earnestly scrutinized by unsuccessful investors, who, 

 if asked why they do so, will reply that, as all the numbers must 

 eventually be drawn an equal number of times, those which have 

 not been drawn for a long time stand the best chance of coming 

 out soon. People often say, when it is raining hard, that it will 

 be made up for by fine weather afterward. A kind of belief ex- 

 ists in a compensating providence that will bring grief after a 

 long run of happiness ; and it is illustrated in the legend of the 

 ring of Polycrates. The mental processes leading up to error in 

 these instances start from the premise that all the numbers have 

 the same chance of winning ; with which is associated the anthro- 

 pomorphic idea of distributive justice, taking, in the legend of 

 Polycrates, the form of divine jealousy; our recollections witness- 

 ing to a tendency to change ; and past experience, teaching that, 

 among a given number of objects, the probability of a particular 

 one being found soon increases in proportion as the others are sort- 

 ed out and put away ; or, as in the filing past of a regiment, our 

 expectation of finding our friend in the next rank grows as com- 

 panies pass in which he does not appear. All this is true in gen- 

 eral. The factor the omission of which in the particular case leads 

 to error is that in the lottery all the numbers are put back into 

 the urn before each drawing, and consequently what has been 

 done has no influence on the probabilities of the present case. 



So, when a certain person is spoken of as having " luck " at 

 play; while he may have had unusual success — that is, a high 

 number of favorable chances among all the possible ones — for a 

 day or several days in succession, any association of his " luck " 

 with his personal qualities is mistaken. We usually reason cor- 

 rectly that men succeed in their lives and enterprises whose per- 



