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trivial though the event was, I should have recognized the hand of Providence in it, I would remark that it requires some degree of self-conceit to regard oneself as the subject of the special intervention of Providence, and moreover that Providence might have contrived the escape in less complicated sort by simply so arranging matters that the glass had not fallen at all. So, at least, it appears to
me.
There arises, in certain cases, the question whether coincidences may not appear so surprising as to justify the assumption that they are due to a real though undiscerned association between the coinciding events. This, of course, is the very basis of the scientific method; and it is well to notice how far this method may sometimes be unsafe. If remarkable coincidences P
can occur when there is no real connection-as we have seen to be the case--caution must be required in recognized coincidence as demonstrative of association.
The rule of science in all such cases is simply to inquire whether there can possibly be any relation of cause and effect in such cases. When a housemaid says, for instance, that putting the poker across a fire makes the fire burn up, the student of physical laws is able at once to see that the supposed influence is antecedently most improbable. Here in a grate are certain more or less combustible materials, and certain quantities of matter already burning; combustion is going on, though indifferently; the air is nourishing this slowly burning fire, but inefficiently; on the whole, it seems likely that the fire will go out. In what way shall I do any good if I stick a rod of iron from the fender across the top bar ? I thus add a certain quantity of cold metal to the space across which the air has to come to the fire. Do I increase the draught? On the contrary, so far as I produce any effect at all on the draught, I must diminish it. For the draught depends in the main on the diminished density of the warmed air in the neighborhood of the fire, and the cold metal must to some degree increase the density of this air by coding it. The effect may be very slight; but such as it is, it is unfavorable. But I was once told by a correspondent that whether theoretically the poker should make the fire burn up or not, as a matter of fact it does. Repeatedly he had tried the experiment, and after ex-
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