It may be remarked in passing, for the sake of further illustration of the subject, that this emotional accompaniment of surprise, to which we are thus able to assign something like a fractional value, differs in two important respects from the commonly accepted fraction of belief. In the first place, it has what may be termed an independent existence; it is intelligible by itself. The belief, as we endeavoured to show, needs explanation and finds it in our consequent conduct. Not so with the emotion; this stands upon its own footing, and may be examined in and by itself. Hence, in the second place, it is as applicable, and as capable of any kind of justification, in relation to the single event, as to a series of events. In this respect, as will be remembered, it offers a complete contrast to our state of belief about any one contingent event. May not these considerations help to account for the general acceptance of the doctrine, that we have a certain definite and measurable amount of belief about these events? I cannot help thinking that what is so obviously true of the emotional portion of the belief, has been unconsciously transferred to the other or intellectual portion of the compound condition, to which it is not applicable, and where it cannot find a justification.
§ 33. A further illustration may now be given of the subjective view of Probability at present under discussion.
An appeal to common language is always of service, as
the employment of any distinct word is generally a proof that mankind have observed some distinct properties in the things, which have caused them to be singled out and have that name appropriated to them. There is such a class of words assigned by popular usage to the kind of events of which Probability takes account. If we examine them we shall find, I think, that they direct us unmistakeably to the two-fold aspect of the question,—the objective and the subjective, the quality in the events and the state of our minds in considering them,—that have occupied our attention during the former chapters.
The word ‘extraordinary’, for instance, seems to point to the observed fact, that events are arranged in a sort of ordo or rank. No one of them might be so exactly placed that we could have inferred its position, but when we take a great many into account together, running our eye, as it were, along the line, we begin to see that they really do for the most part stand in order. Those which stand away from the line have this divergence observed, and are called extraordinary, the rest ordinary, or in the line. So too ‘irregular’ and ‘abnormal’ are doubtless used from the appearance of things, when examined in large numbers, being that of an arrangement by rule or measure. This only holds when there are a good many; we could not speak of the single events being so arranged. Again the word ‘law’, in its philosophical sense, has now become quite popularised. How the term became introduced is not certain, but there can be little doubt that it was somewhat in this way:—The effect of a law, in its usual application to human conduct, is to produce regularity where it did not previously exist; when then a regularity began to be perceived in nature, the same word was used, whether the cause was supposed to be the same or not. In each case there
was the same generality of agreement, subject to occasional deflection.[8]
On the other hand, observe the words ‘wonderful’, ‘unexpected’, ‘incredible’. Their connotation describes states of mind simply; they are of course not confined to Probability, in the sense of statistical frequency, but imply simply that the events they denote are such as from some cause we did not expect would happen, and at which therefore, when they do happen, we are surprised.