§ 1. It is sometimes not easy to give a clear definition of a science at the outset, so as to set its scope and province before the reader in a few words. In the case of those sciences which are more immediately and directly concerned with what are termed objects, rather than with what are termed processes, this difficulty is not indeed so serious. If the reader is already familiar with the objects, a simple reference to them will give him a tolerably accurate idea of the direction and nature of his studies. Even if he be not familiar with them, they will still be often to some extent connected and associated in his mind by a name, and the mere utterance of the name may thus convey a fair amount of preliminary information. This is more or less the case with many of the natural sciences; we can often tell the reader beforehand exactly what he is going to study. But when a science is concerned, not so much with objects directly, as with processes and laws, or when it takes for the subject of its enquiry some comparatively obscure feature drawn from phenomena which have little or nothing else in common, the difficulty of giving preliminary information becomes greater. Recognized classes of objects have then
to be disregarded and even broken up, and an entirely novel arrangement of the objects to be made. In such cases it is the study of the science that first gives the science its unity, for till it is studied the objects with which it is concerned were probably never thought of together. Here a definition cannot be given at the outset, and the process of obtaining it may become by comparison somewhat laborious.
The science of Probability, at least on the view taken of it in the following pages, is of this latter description. The reader who is at present unacquainted with the science cannot be at once informed of its scope by a reference to objects with which he is already familiar. He will have to be taken in hand, as it were, and some little time and trouble will have to be expended in directing his attention to our subject-matter before he can be expected to know it. To do this will be our first task.
§ 2. In studying Nature, in any form, we are continually coming into possession of information which we sum up in general propositions. Now in very many cases these general propositions are neither more nor less certain and accurate than the details which they embrace and of which they are composed. We are assuming at present that the truth of these generalizations is not disputed; as a matter of fact they may rest on weak evidence, or they may be uncertain from their being widely extended by induction; what is meant is, that when we resolve them into their component parts we have precisely the same assurance of the truth of the details as we have of that of the whole. When I know, for instance, that all cows ruminate, I feel just as certain that any particular cow or cows ruminate as that the whole class does. I may be right or wrong in my original statement, and I may have obtained it by any conceivable mode in which truths can be obtained; but whatever the value of
the general proposition may be, that of the particulars is neither greater nor less. The process of inferring the particular from the general is not accompanied by the slightest diminution of certainty. If one of these ‘immediate inferences’ is justified at all, it will be equally right in every case.