d as appropriate.

The mode of argument used by the author of the tract above named has a
striking defect. He talks of reducing this world and the next to "present
value," as an actuary does with successive lives or next presentations.
Does value make interest? and if not, why? And if it do, then the present
value of an eternity is _not_ infinitely great. Who is ignorant that a
perpetual annuity at five per cent is worth only twenty years' purchase?
This point ought to be discussed by a person who treats heaven as a
deferred perpetual annuity. I do not ask him to do so, and would rather he
did not; but if he _will_ do it, he must either deal with the question of
discount, or be asked the reason why.

When a very young man, I was frequently exhorted to one or another view of
religion by pastors and others who thought that a mathematical argument
would be irresistible. And I heard the following more than once, and have
since seen it in print, I forget where. Since eternal happiness belonged to
the particular views in question, a benefit infinitely great, then, even if
the probability of their arguments were small, or even infinitely small,
yet the product of the chance and benefit, according to the usual rule,
might give a result which no one ought in prudence to pass over. They did
not see that this applied to all systems as well as their own. I take this
argument to be the most perverse of all the perversions I have heard or
read on the subject: there is some high authority for it, whom I forget.

The moral of all this is, that such things as the preceding should be kept
out of the way of those who are not {73} mathematicians, because they do
not understand the argument; and of those who are, because they do.

[The high authority referred to above is Pascal, an early cultivator of
mathematical probability, and obviously too much enamoured of his new
pursuit. But he conceives himself bound to wager on one side or the other.
To the argument (_Pensees_, ch. 7)[155] that "le juste est de ne point
parier," he answers, "Oui: mais il faut parier: vous etes embarque; et ne
parier point que Dieu est, c'est parier qu'il n'est pas."[156] Leaving
Pascal's argument to make its way with a person who, _being a sceptic_, is
yet positive that the issue is salvation or perdition, if a God there
be,--for the case as put by Pascal requires this,--I shall merely observe
that a person who elects to believe in God, as the best chance of gain