Here the mathematicians attempt to rescue moral philosophy. They would demonstrate the improbability of luck. If asked how it happened that a man won a hundred thousand dollar prize, while his neighbor drew a blank, the mathematician might tell you it was chance; that there was a necessity for the prize to fall somewhere, and that he who had the most chances was the most likely to obtain it. Such caviling could be dismissed with the answer: You acknowledge the necessity of a prize falling _somewhere_, then why not to me. Surely my chances are as good as my neighbors’, perhaps more so. It may be; and what may be may be now. “There is no prerogative in human hours.” “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” No intelligent gambler is a believer in “luck” as _a personal quality_. He recognizes the phenomena of chance. _How_ they will operate is not known to the mathematician more than to him; the “chances” may result favorably or unfavorably for a gambler; the law may so work as to benefit him, or it may not. Whether “chance” or “luck,” is immaterial to the issue. But seriously, for what do these aspirants contend? A method of reasoning from the happening of an event to the _probabilities_ of one or another cause; that the possible combinations in a pack of cards, or a handful of dice, may be computed, even when the question involves the chances of a thousand dice, or a thousand throws of one die. In its very nature this is a vain-glorious pretension, and upon what is it based? An _hypothesis_ presenting the necessity of one or another out of a certain number of consequences. In other words, _given_ an event as having happened, and which _might_ have been the consequence of either of several causes, or explicable by either of several _hypotheses_, the probabilities can be _inferred_. In this way is the philosophy of supposition substituted for that of caprice. We are asked by the mathematician, at the very outset, to assume something he has not proved, and which is not susceptible of proof. We are required to take for granted the imaginary premises upon which his argument depends. Is this not the acme of intellectual audacity? But having yielded his antecedent proposition, what is the result? A bare probability--a mere likelihood of the occurrence of any event. So much for the boasted “Doctrine of Chances.” Besides, I assert that every premise of the mathematician has been refuted by my experience as a gamester. In the proper place, I could disprove his every theory with a fact. For example: De Morgan and Proctor tell us that it is not probable seven could be thrown ten successive times, with a pair of dice. We are told, on good authority, that in 1813, a Mr. Ogden wagered 1,000 guineas that his opponent would not perform this feat. That gentleman threw seven _nine times_ running.