8. It is both amusing and instructive to consider what very different feelings might have been excited in our minds by this co-existence of, what may be called, ignorance of individuals and knowledge of aggregates, if they had presented themselves to our observation in a reverse order. Being utterly unable to make assured predictions about a single life, or the conduct of individuals, people are sometimes startled, and occasionally even dismayed, at the unexpected discovery that such predictions can be confidently made when we are speaking of large numbers. And so some are prompted to exclaim, This is denying Providence! it is utter Fatalism! But let us assume, for a moment, that our familiarity with the subject had been experienced, in the first instance, in reference to the aggregates instead of the individual lives. It is difficult, perhaps, to carry out such a supposition completely; though we may readily conceive something approaching to it in the case of an ignorant clerk in a Life Assurance Office, who had never thought of life, except as having such a 'value' at such an age, and who had hardly estimated it except in the form of averages. Might we not suppose him, in some moment of reflectiveness, being astonished and dismayed at the sudden realization of the utter uncertainty in which the single life is involved? And might not his exclamation in turn be, Why this is denying Providence! It is utter chaos and chance! A belief in a Creator and Administrator of the world is not confined to any particular assumption about the nature of the immediate sequence of events, but those who have been accustomed hitherto to regard the events under one of the aspects above referred to, will often for a time feel at a loss how to connect them with the other. 9. So far we have been touching on a very general question; viz. the relation of the fundamental postulates of Probability to the conception of Order or Uniformity in the world, physical or moral. The difficulties which thence arise are mainly theological, metaphysical or psychological. What we must now consider are problems of a more detailed or logical character. They are prominently these two; (1) the distinction between chance arrangement and _causal_ arrangement in physical phenomena; and (2) the distinction between chance arrangement and _designed_ arrangement where we are supposed to be contemplating rational agency as acting on one side at least. II. The first of these questions raises the antithesis between chance and causation, not as a general characteristic pervading all phenomena, but in reference to some specified occurrence:--Is this a case of chance or not? The most strenuous supporters of the universal prevalence of causation and order admit that the question is a relevant one, and they must therefore be supposed to have some rule for testing the answers to it.