In the above case the appeal to the process of production was subsidiary, but when we come to consider the nature of a very small succession or group this appeal becomes much more important. Let us be told of a certain succession of 'heads' and 'tails' to the number of ten. The range here is far too small for decision, and unless we are told whether the agent who obtained them was tossing or designing we are quite unable to say whether or not the designation of 'random' ought to be applied to the result obtained. The truth must never be forgotten that though 'design' is sure to break down in the long run if it make the attempt to produce directly the semblance of randomness,[4] yet for a short spell it can simulate it perfectly. Any short succession, say of heads and tails, may have been equally well brought about by tossing or by deliberate choice. 13. The reader will observe that this question of randomness is being here treated as simply one of ultimate statistical fact. I have fully admitted that this is not the primitive conception, nor is it the popular interpretation, but to adopt it seems the only course open to us if we are to draw inferences such as those contemplated in Probability. When we look to the producing agency of the ultimate arrangement we may find this very various. It may prove itself to be (a few stages back) one of conscious deliberate purpose, as in drawing a card or tossing a die: it may be the outcome of an extremely complicated interaction of many natural causes, as in the arrangement of the flowers scattered over a lawn or meadow: it may be of a kind of which we know literally nothing whatever, as in the case of the actual arrangement of the stars relatively to each other.