Page:System of Logic.djvu/390

384 non-occurrence will depend, and form an estimate of the comparative frequency of the causes favorable and of those unfavorable to the occurrence. These are data of a higher order, by which the empirical law derived from a mere numerical comparison of affirmative and negative instances will be either corrected or confirmed, and in either case we shall obtain a more correct measure of probability than is given by that numerical comparison. It has been well remarked that in the kind of examples by which the doctrine of chances is usually illustrated, that of balls in a box, the estimate of probabilities is supported by reasons of causation, stronger than specific experience. "What is the reason that in a box where there are nine black balls and one white, we expect to draw a black ball nine times as much (in other words, nine times as often, frequency being the gauge of intensity in expectation) as a white? Obviously because the local conditions are nine times as favorable; because the hand may alight in nine places and get a black ball, while it can only alight in one place and find a white ball; just for the same reason that we do not expect to succeed in finding a friend in a crowd, the conditions in order that we and he should come together being many and difficult. This of course would not hold to the same extent were the white balls of smaller size than the black, neither would the probability remain the same; the larger ball would be much more likely to meet the hand."

It is, in fact, evident that when once causation is admitted as a universal law, our expectation of events can only be rationally grounded on that law. To a person who recognizes that every event depends on causes, a thing's having happened once is a reason for expecting it to happen again, only because proving that there exists, or is liable to exist, a cause adequate to produce it. The frequency of the particular event, apart from all surmise respecting its cause, can give rise to no other induction than that per enumerationem simplicem; and the precarious inferences derived from this are superseded, and disappear from the field as soon as the principle of causation makes its appearance there.

Notwithstanding, however, the abstract superiority of an estimate of probability grounded on causes, it is a fact that in almost all cases in which chances admit of estimation sufficiently precise to render their numerical appreciation of any practical value, the numerical data are not drawn from knowledge of the causes, but from experience of the events