Page:A philosophical essay on probabilities Tr. Truscott, Emory 1902.djvu/170

 CHAPTER XVI.

CONCERNING ILLUSIONS IN THE ESTIMATION OF PROBABILITIES.

mind has its illusions as the sense of sight; and in the same manner that the sense of feeling corrects the latter, reflection and calculation correct the former. Probability based upon a daily experience, or exaggerated by fear and by hope, strikes us more than a superior probability but it is only a simple result of calculus. Thus we do not fear in return for small advantages to expose our life to dangers much less improbable than the drawing of a quint in the lottery of France; and yet no one would wish to procure for himself the same advantages with the certainty of losing his life if this quint should be drawn.

Our passions, our prejudices, and dominating opinions, by exaggerating the probabilities which are favorable to them and by attenuating the contrary probabilities, are the abundant sources of dangerous illusions.

Present evils and the cause which produced them effect us much more than the remembrance of evils produced by the contrary cause; they prevent us from 160