Natural philosophy. An essay on probabilities and their application to life contingencies and insurance offers by Augustus De Morgan.

  • De Morgan, Augustus, 1806-1871.
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Natural philosophy. An essay on probabilities and their application to life contingencies and insurance offers by Augustus De Morgan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    depends upon the constitution of the minds of B and C what shall be the result of discussion upon them. Let it be granted that the intellectual constitution of A, B, and C is precisely the same at a given moment, and there is ground for declaring that any difference of opinion upon the same arguments must be one of moral character. Granting, then, that it were quite certain A is right, he might be justified in using methods with B and C which are reformative of moral character; that is to say, granting that state punishments are reform- ative of immoral habits, as well as repressive of im- moral acts, he would be justified in direct persecution. But to any one who is able to see with the eyes of his body that the same weight will stretch different strings differently, and with those of his mind that the same arguments will affect different minds differently — by difference not of moral but of intellectual construction — will also see that the only legitimate process of alteration is that of the latter character, not of the former; namely, argument * and discussion. In the mean time, we bring it forward as not the least of the advantages of this study, that it has a tendency constantly to keep before the mind considerations necessarily corrective of one of the most fearful taints of our intellect. Let us now consider what is the measure of proba- bility. Any one thing is said to measure another when the former grows with the growth of the latter, and diminishes with its diminution. For instance, in the tube of a thermometer, the height of the mercury above freezing point (a line) measures the content of a cy- linder ; not that a line is a solid, but twice as much length belongs to twice as much content, and so on. Again, the content of the cylinder measures the quantity of expansion in a given quantity of mercury (and in this case not only measures, but is). Thirdly, the * It is frequently asserted, that opinions dangerous to the existence of public ord(f must not be promulgated. This is a question distinct from the one in the text, so far as it is political. If we grant no morals except expe- diency, (which, it appears to us, is necessary for the affirmation of the pre. ceding,) the answer is, simply, that persecution is ineffective. .