this so-called objective testimony on both sides?
What fills up the gaps in our minds is something not objective, not
external. What divides us into possibility men and anti-possibility
men is different faiths or postulates,--postulates of rationality. To
this man the world seems more rational with possibilities in it,--to
that man more rational with possibilities excluded; and talk as we will
about having to yield to {153} evidence, what makes us monists or
pluralists, determinists or indeterminists, is at bottom always some
sentiment like this.

The stronghold of the deterministic sentiment is the antipathy to the
idea of chance. As soon as we begin to talk indeterminism to our
friends, we find a number of them shaking their heads. This notion of
alternative possibility, they say, this admission that any one of
several things may come to pass, is, after all, only a roundabout name
for chance; and chance is something the notion of which no sane mind
can for an instant tolerate in the world. What is it, they ask, but
barefaced crazy unreason, the negation of intelligibility and law? And
if the slightest particle of it exist anywhere, what is to prevent the
whole fabric from falling together, the stars from going out, and chaos
from recommencing her topsy-turvy reign?

Remarks of this sort about chance will put an end to discussion as
quickly as anything one can find. I have already told you that
'chance' was a word I wished to keep and use. Let us then examine
exactly what it means, and see whether it ought to be such a terrible
bugbear to us. I fancy that squeezing the thistle boldly will rob it
of its sting.

The sting of the word 'chance' seems to lie in the assumption that it
means something positive, and that if anything happens by chance, it
must needs be something of an intrinsically irrational and preposterous
sort. Now, chance means nothing of the kind. It is a purely negative
and relative term,[4] giving us {154} no information about that of
which it is predicated, except that it happens to be disconnected with
something else,--not controlled, secured, or necessitated by other
things in advance of its own actual presence. As this point is the
most subtile one of the whole lecture, and at the same time the point
on which all the rest hinges, I beg you to pay particular attention to
it. What I say is that it tells us nothing about what a thing may be
in itself to call it 'chance.' It may be a ba