Page:A philosophical essay on probabilities Tr. Truscott, Emory 1902.djvu/118

108 sciences the method founded upon observation and upon calculus, the method which has served us so well in the natural sciences. Let us not offer in the least a useless and often dangerous resistance to the inevitable effects of the progress of knowledge; but let us change only with an extreme circumspection our institutions and the usages to which we have already so long conformed. We should know well by the experience of the past the difficulties which they present; but we are ignorant of the extent of the evils which their change can produce. In this ignorance the theory of probability directs us to avoid all change; especially is it necessary to avoid the sudden changes which in the moral world as well as in the physical world never operate without a great loss of vital force.

Already the calculus of probabilities has been applied with success to several subjects of the moral sciences. I shall present here the principal results.