with effects and causes well proportioned to each other; then,
by a series of arbitrary decrees, we augment, diminish, suppress, so as
to obtain what we call disorder. In reality we have substituted _will_
for the mechanism of nature; we have replaced the "automatic order" by a
multitude of elementary wills, just to the extent that we imagine the
apparition or vanishing of phenomena. No doubt, for all these little
wills to constitute a "willed order," they must have accepted the
direction of a higher will. But, on looking closely at them, we see that
that is just what they do: our own will is there, which objectifies
itself in each of these capricious wills in turn, and takes good care
not to connect the same with the same, nor to permit the effect to be
proportional to the cause--in fact makes one simple intention hover over
the whole of the elementary volitions. Thus, here again, the absence of
one of the two orders consists in the presence of the other. In
analyzing the idea of chance, which is closely akin to the idea of
disorder, we find the same elements. When the wholly mechanical play of
the causes which stop the wheel on a number makes me win, and
consequently acts like a good genius, careful of my interests, or when
the wholly mechanical force of the wind tears a tile off the roof and
throws it on to my head, that is to say acts like a bad genius,
conspiring against my person: in both cases I find a mechanism where I
should have looked for, where, indeed, it seems as if I ought to have
found, an intention. That is what I express in speaking of _chance_. And
of an anarchical world, in which phenomena succeed each other
capriciously, I should say again that it is a realm of chance, meaning
that I find before me wills, or rather _decrees_, when what I am
expecting is mechanism. Thus is explained the singular vacillation of
the mind when it tries to define chance. Neither efficient cause nor
final cause can furnish the definition sought. The mind swings to and
fro, unable to rest, between the idea of an absence of final cause and
that of an absence of efficient cause, each of these definitions sending
it back to the other. The problem remains insoluble, in fact, so long as
the idea of chance is regarded as a pure idea, without mixture of
feeling. But, in reality, chance merely objectifies the state of mind of
one who, expecting one of the two kinds of order, finds himself
confronted with the other. Chance and disor