Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. By Dugald Stewart. Rev. and abridged, with critical and explanatory notes, for the use of colleges and schools. By Francis Bowen ...

474 REASONING AND DEDUCTIVE EVIDENCE.
five and a half, and twenty-six, in the greatest part of France;
in cities, as one to twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, and
even thirty, according to their extent and their trade." "Such
proportions," he observes, " can only be remarked in districts
where there are no settlers nor emigrants; but even the
differences arising from these (the same author adds), and
many other'causes, acquire a kind of uniformity, when collectively considered, and in the immense extent of so great a
kingdom."
It may be worth while to remark, that it is on these principles that all the different institutions for assurances [insurance]
are founded. The object at which they all aim, in common, is,
to diminish the number of accidents to which human life is exposed, or rather to counteract the inconveniences resulting from
the irregularity of individual events, by the uniformity of general laws.
The idea of a great cycle in the order of events. - The advantages which we derive from such general conclusions as we
possess concerning the order of nature are so great, and our
propensity to believe in its existence is so strong, that, even in
cases where the succession of events appears the most anomalous, we are apt to suspect the operation of fixed and constant
laws, though we may be unable to trace them. The vulgar, in
all countries, perhaps, have a propensity to imagine, that, after
a certain number of years, the succession of plentiful and of
scanty harvests begins again to be repeated in the same series as
before, a notion to which Lord Bacon himself has given some
countenance in the following passage:'" There is a toy which I
have heard, and I would not have it given over, but waited
upon a little. They say it is observed in the Low Countries,
(I know not in what part,) that every five-and-thirty years, the
same kind and suite of years and weathers comes about again;
as great frosts, great wet, great droughts, warm winters, summers with little heat, and the like; and they call it the prime.
It is a thing I do the rather mention, because, computing backwards, I have found some concurrence."
Among the philosophers of antiquity, the influence of the