Still the question is one which is so naturally raised in connection with this subject, that it cannot be altogether passed by. I think that to a considerable extent such a justification as that mentioned above will be found applicable in other cases. The fact is that we are very seldom called upon to decide and act upon a single contingency which cannot be viewed as being one of a series. Experience introduces us, it must be remembered, not merely to a succession of events neatly arranged in a single series (as we have hitherto assumed them to be for the purpose of illustration), but to an infinite number belonging to a vast variety of different series. A man is obliged to be acting, and therefore exercising his belief about one thing or another, almost the whole of every day of his life. Any one person will have to decide in his time about a multitude of events, each one of which may never recur again within his own experience. But by the very fact of there being a multitude, though they are all of different kinds, we shall still find that order is maintained, and so a course of conduct can be justified. In a plantation of trees we should find that there is order of a certain kind if we measure them in any one direction, the trees being on an average about the same distance from each other. But a somewhat similar order would be found if we were to examine them in any other direction whatsoever. So in nature generally; there is regularity in a succession of events of the same kind. But there may also be regularity
if we form a series by taking successively a number out of totally distinct kinds.
It is in this circumstance that we find an extension of the practical justification of the measure of our belief. A man, say, buys a life annuity, insures his life on a railway journey, puts into a lottery, and so on. Now we may make a series out of these acts of his, though each is in itself a single event which he may never intend to repeat. His conduct, and therefore his belief, measured by the result in each individual [TN: ** shewn changed to shown] instance, will not be justified, but the reverse, as shown in § 19. Could he indeed repeat each kind of action often enough it would be justified; but from this, by the conditions of life, he is debarred. Now it is perfectly conceivable that in the new series, formed by his successive acts of different kinds, there should be no regularity. As a matter of fact, however, it is found that there is regularity. In this way the equalization of his gains and losses, for which he cannot hope in annuities, insurances, and lotteries taken separately, may yet be secured to him out of these events taken collectively. If in each case he values his chance at its right proportion (and acts accordingly) he will in the course of his life neither gain nor lose. And in the same way if, whenever he has the alternative of different courses of conduct, he acts in accordance with the estimate of his belief described above, i.e.[ TN: space] chooses the event whose chance is the best, he will in the end gain more in this way than by any other course. By the existence, therefore, of these cross-series, as we may term them, there is an immense addition to the number of actions which may be fairly considered to belong to those courses of conduct which offer many successive opportunities of equalizing gains and losses. All these cases then may be regarded as admitting of justification in the way now under discussion.
§ 25. In the above remarks it will be observed that we have been giving what is to be regarded as a justification of his belief from the point of view of the individual agent himself. If we suppose the existence of an enlarged fellow-feeling, the applicability of such a