we do not place too great a burden upon coincidences when we attempt by them to account for the specious evidences of astrology and divination.
INTERPRETATION OF COINCIDENCES
The following principles concerning coincidences will be found reliable as working laws:
First. As a general proposition, the law of coincidences is that when two phenomena always coincide they are either connected as "cause and effect" or are the "effect of a common cause." But if they do not always coincide, neither of these is proved. They may then be the effects of separate causes working in their respective planes.
The first question is, Do the phenomena always coincide? The importance of a wide generalization is often lost sight of, and erroneous conclusions are asserted with all the confidence of demonstration. A physician who lives near the sea says that during the past five years he has noted the hour and minute of death of ninety-three patients, and that each has "gone out with the tide" save four, who died suddenly by accident. Yet about thirty-two years ago, a writer in the English "Quarterly Review" claimed to have ascertained the hour of death in 2880 instances of all ages. His observations show that the maximum hour of death is from 5 to 6 o'clock a. m., when it is 40 per cent. above the average; the next during the hour before midnight, when it is 25 per cent. in excess. Between 9 and 10 o'clock in the morning it is 17½ per cent. above, but from 10 a. m. to 3 p. m. it is 16½ per cent. below the average. From 3 to 7 in the afternoon the deaths rise to 5½ per cent. above the average, and then fall from that
