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5.] § 5. In support of an affirmative answer to the former of these two questions, several different kinds of proof are, or might be, offered.

(I.) For one plan we may make a direct appeal to experience, by collecting sets of statistics and observing what is their law of distribution. As remarked above, this has been done in a great variety of cases, and in some instances to a very considerable extent, by Quetelet and others. His researches have made it abundantly convincing that many classes of things and processes, differing widely in their nature and origin, do nevertheless appear to conform with a considerable degree of accuracy to one and the same law. At least this is made plain for the more