Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/327

Rh murder ; but take a population of 100,000, and in a given time some one or other is sure to be found committing murder. All double things are done at intervals ; and though there is the greatest uncertainty when they will be done, yet give laxity enough, allow a thousand, a hundred, or fifty years, and it may be confidently predicted that the thing will be done in that time ; and this by no quality inherent in the thing or the doer, but by the law of numeration. Hence we cannot say, as Emerson somewhere says, that "if one man in thirty thousand eats shoes, or marries his grandmother, then one man in every thirty thousand must eat shoes, or marry his grandmother," for there is no necessity in the case. Take the dice. The mathematician will tell you exactly how often he will throw aces in 10,000 throws. But suppose by some very possible accident you had made 9990 throws without turning aces the average number of times, are you in any conceivable way surer of having aces in the last ten throws than if you were only just beginning the game? Not a bit. The former throws have nothing to do with the latter. The law is a law of numbers, a law of chances applicable to numbers and on the average applicable to all numerable things ; but not implying any force, or cause, or reason why the things themselves should be thus rather than otherwise. Hence, in the first place, we should never be surprised if facts, the origin of which is free-will, are numbered ; nor, secondly, if they are found capable of being averaged, so that a given number of them take place in a given time, but from this to make the third step, and to say, because they are numerable, because they can be averaged, therefore they happened by necessity, by a fixed law, is absurd in any man, and in Mr. Buckle dishonest.

It is dishonest in Mr. Buckle, because he must be aware that he is using the words law and necessity in a sense quite different from that intended by ordinary mortals. When we say "law," we always think of some force, or command, which is the cause of the thing being done. But Mr. Buckle, by /aw, only means numerical