required. It is altogether unnecessary, for instance, to form any opinion upon the questions discussed in metaphysics as to the independent existence of substances. We have discovered, on examination, a series composed of groups of substances and attributes, or of attributes alone. At such a series we stop, and thence investigate our rules of inference; into what these substances or attributes would themselves be ultimately analysed, if taken in hand by the psychologist or metaphysician, it is no business of ours to enquire here.
§ 10. The stage then which we have now reached is that of having discovered a quantity of things (they prove on analysis to be groups of things) which are capable of being classified together, and are best regarded as constituting a series. The distinctive peculiarity of this series is our finding in it an order, gradually emerging out of disorder, and showing in time a marked and unmistakeable uniformity.
The impression which may possibly be derived from the description of such a series, and which the reader will probably already entertain if he have studied Probability before, is that the gradual evolution of this order is indefinite, and its approach therefore to perfection unlimited. And many of the examples commonly selected certainly tend to confirm such an impression. But in reference to the theory of the subject it is, I am convinced, an error, and one liable to lead to much confusion.
The lines which have been prefixed as a motto to this work, “So careful of the type she seems, so careless of the single life,” are soon after corrected by the assertion that the type itself, if we regard it for a long time, changes, and then vanishes and is succeeded by others. So in Probability; that uniformity which is found in the long run, and which presents so great a contrast to the individual
