time, is not confined to consummate genius and to mere chance. There is a third alternative, viz.[* TN: space] that of purely mechanical procedure. Any one, down almost to an idiot, might do it, if he took sufficient time about the task. For suppose that the required number of letters were procured and arranged, not by chance, but designedly, and according to rules suggested by the theory of permutations: the letters of the alphabet and the number of them to be employed being finite, every order in which they could occur would come in its due turn, and therefore every thing which can be expressed in language would be arrived at some time or other.
There is really nothing that need shock any one in such a result. Its possibility arises from the following cause.
The number of letters, and therefore of words, at our disposal is limited; whatever therefore we may desire to express in language necessarily becomes subject to corresponding limitation. The possible variations of thought are literally infinite, so are those of spoken language (by intonation of the voice, &c.); but when we come to words there is a limitation, the nature of which is distinctly conceivable by the mind, though the restriction is one that in practice will never be appreciable, owing to the fact that the number of combinations which may be produced is so enormous as to surpass all power of the imagination to realize.[9] The answer therefore is plain, and it is one that will apply to many other cases as well, that to put a finite limit upon the number of ways in which a thing can be done, is to determine that any one who is able and willing to try long enough shall succeed in doing it. If a great genius condescends to perform it under these circumstances, he must submit to the possibility of having his claims rivalled or disputed by the chance-man and idiot. If Shakespeare were limited to the use of eight or nine assigned words, the time within which the latter agents might claim equality with him would not be very great. As it is, having had the range of the English language at his disposal, his reputation is not in danger of being assailed by any such methods.
§ 23. The case of the possible production of the world by chance leads us into an altogether different region of discussion. We are not here dealing with figures the nature and use of which are within the fair powers of the understanding, however the imagination may break down in attempting to realize the smallest fraction of their full significance.
The understanding itself is wandering out of its proper province, for the conditions of the problem cannot be assigned. When we draw letters out of a bag we know very well what we are doing; but what is really meant by producing a world by chance? By analogy of the former case, we may assume that some kind of agent is presupposed;—perhaps therefore the following supposition is less absurd than any other. Imagine some being, not a Creator but a sort of Demiurgus, who has had a quantity of materials put into his hands, and he assigns them their collocations and their laws of action, blindly and at haphazard: what are the odds that such a world as we actually experience should have been brought about in this way?
If it were worth while seriously to set about answering such a question, and if some one would furnish us with the number of the letters of such an alphabet, and the length of the work to be written with them, we could proceed to indicate the result. But so much as this may surely be affirmed about it;—that, far from merely finding the length of this small volume insufficient for containing the figures in which the adverse odds would be given, all the paper which the world has hitherto produced would be used up before we had got far on our way in writing them down.
§ 24. The most seductive form in which the difficulty about the occurrence of very rare events generally presents itself is probably this. ‘You admit (some persons will be disposed to say) that such an event may