# Page:ScienceAndHypothesis1905.djvu/232

points being very close together, our discrete sum will in general differ very little from an integral. An integral is the limit towards which a sum of terms tends when the number of these terms is indefinitely increased. If the terms are very numerous, the sum will differ very little from its limit — that is to say, from the integral, and what I said of the latter will still be true of the sum itself. But there are exceptions. If, for instance, for all the minor planets $b=\frac{\pi}{2}-at$, the longitude of all the planets at the time t would be $\frac{\pi}{2}$, and the mean value in question would be evidently unity. For this to be the case at the time o, the minor planets must have all been lying on a kind of spiral of peculiar form, with its spires very close together. All will admit that such an initial distribution is extremely improbable (and even if it were realised, the distribution would not be uniform at the present time — for example, on the 1st January 1900; but it would become so a few years later). Why, then, do we think this initial distribution improbable? This must be explained, for if we are wrong in rejecting as improbable this absurd hypothesis, our inquiry breaks down, and we can no longer affirm any thing on the subject of the probability of this or that present distribution. Once more we shall invoke the principle of sufficient reason, to which we must always recur. We might admit that at the beginning the planets were distributed almost