Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/630

612 fortunately, as the whole requirement is that we should have certain sentiments, there is nothing in the facts to forbid our having a hope, or calm and cheerful wish, that the community may last beyond any assignable date.

It may seem strange that I should put forward three sentiments, namely, interest in an indefinite community, recognition of the possibility of this interest being made supreme, and hope in the unlimited continuance of intellectual activity, as indispensable requirements of logic. Yet, when we consider that logic depends on a mere struggle to escape doubt, which, as it terminates in action, must begin in emotion, and that, furthermore, the only cause of our planting ourselves on reason is that other methods of escaping doubt fail on account of the social impulse, why should we wonder to find social sentiment presupposed in reasoning? As for the other two sentiments which I find necessary, they are so only as supports and accessories of that. It interests me to notice that these three sentiments seem to be pretty much the same as that famous trio of Charity, Faith, and Hope, which, in the estimation of St. Paul, are the finest and greatest of spiritual gifts. Neither Old nor New Testament is a text-book of the logic of science, but the latter is certainly the highest existing authority in regard to the dispositions of heart which a man ought to have.

Such average statistical numbers as the number of inhabitants per square mile, the average number of deaths per week, the number of convictions per indictment, or, generally speaking, the number of x ' s per y, where the x ' s are a class of things some or all of which are connected with another class of things, their y's, I term relative numbers. Of the two classes of things to which a relative number refers, that one of which it is a number may be called its relate, and that one per which the numeration is made may be called its correlate.

Probability is a kind of relative number; namely, it is the ratio of the number of arguments of a certain genus which carry truth with them to the total number of arguments of that genus, and the rules for the calculation of probabilities are very easily derived from this consideration. They may all be given here, since they are extremely simple, and it is sometimes convenient to know something of the elementary rules of calculation of chances.

I. Direct Calculation.—To calculate, directly, any relative number, say for instance the number of passengers in the average trip of a street-car, we must proceed as follows:

Count the number of passengers for each trip; add all these numbers, and divide by the number of trips. There are cases in which this rule may be simplified. Suppose we wish to know the number