In our example above, the office (in so far as the particular cases in Madeira are concerned) would get on very well until the consumptive Englishmen in question found out what much better terms they could make by announcing themselves as consumptives, and paying the premium appropriate to that class, instead of announcing themselves as Englishmen. But if they did this they would of course be disturbing the statistics. The tables were based upon the assumption that a certain fixed proportion (it does not matter what proportion) of the English lives would continue to be consumptive lives, which, under the supposed circumstances, would probably soon cease to be true. When it is said that nine Englishmen out of ten die in Madeira, it is meant that of those who come to the office, as the phrase is, at random, or in their fair proportions, nine-tenths die. The consumptives are supposed to go there just like red-haired men, or poets, or any other special class. Or they might go in any proportions greater or less than those of other classes, so long as they adhered to the same proportion throughout. The tables are then calculated on the continuance of this state of things; the practical contradiction is in supposing such a state of things to continue after the people had once had a look at the tables. If we merely make the assumption that the publication of these tables made no such alteration in the conduct of those to whom it referred, no hitch of this kind need occur. 26. The assumptions here made, as has been said, are not in any way contradictory, but they need some explanation. It will readily be seen that, taken together, they are inconsistent with the supposition that each of these classes is homogeneous, that is, that the statistical proportions which hold of the whole of either of them will also hold of any portion of them which we may take. There are certain individuals (viz. the consumptive Englishmen) who belong to each class, and of course the two different sets of statistics cannot both be true of them taken by themselves. They might coincide in their characteristics with either class, but not with both; probably in most practical cases they will coincide with neither, but be of a somewhat intermediate character. Now when it is said of any such heterogeneous body that, say, nine-tenths die, what is meant (or rather implied) is that the class might be broken up into smaller subdivisions of a more homogeneous character, in some of which, of course, more than nine-tenths die, whilst in others less, the differences depending upon their character, constitution, profession, &c.; the number of such divisions and the amount of their divergence from one another being perhaps very considerable.