on termed physical, and all repeated sequences
of such phenomena, may have occurred, not causally, but casually--that
it may have been a fortuitous concourse of atoms which originally
established the existing economy of the universe, and an uninterrupted
succession of similar fortuitous concourses that has ever since
maintained that economy. That supposition, I repeat, involves no
absolute absurdity. What however is, if not absurd, at any rate
egregiously unscientific and most unphilosophically credulous, is to
treat the supposition as a certainty, notwithstanding that the chances
against its representing real facts are as infinity to infinitesimality;
for not less is the preponderance of improbability that the laws of
nature were not intentionally prescribed, and that the wondrously
complex and wondrously useful harmony that has been established between
organic structure and natural law was not designedly established. In
considering this point, it will be convenient to take law first.

Inasmuch as, on the assumption that all phenomena of inorganic matter
are effects, purely unpremeditated, of Nature's capricious restlessness,
there would of course be no more reason why any one such phenomenon than
any other should not at any time occur, there would equally of course on
the same assumption, be no more reason why it should. An infinity of
phenomena being at all times equally possible, the chances against any
one being, on any occasion, preferred to all the rest, would be infinity
less one. Against any particular sequence of phenomena they would be as
infinity less one multiplied by the number of phenomena composing the
sequence, and against one or more repetitions of the same sequence they
would be the same multiple of virtual infinity multiplied by the number
of repetitions. Against perpetual repetition, they would, as it were, be
virtual infinity multiplied by infinity. On the assumption stated, an
apple loosened from the parent stem, might quite possibly fall to the
ground, but quite as possibly might remain suspended in mid air, or rise
straight upwards, or take any one of the innumerable directions
intervening between zenith and nadir, travelling too, unless
interrupted, in the direction selected for any period, from a single
moment to endless ages. Experience, however, teaches that an apple or
any other body of greater specific gravity than air, does invariably,
when deprived of support, fall straight downward, such