classification that turns a deaf ear to everything not robust enough
to hold its own; nevertheless even the most scrupulous of
philosophers pockets his consistency at a pinch, and refuses to let
the native hue of resolution be sicklied o'er with the pale cast of
thought, nor yet fobbed by the rusty curb of logic. He is right,
for assuredly the poor intellectual abuses of the time want
countenancing now as much as ever, but so far as he countenances
them, he should bear in mind that he is returning to the ground of
common sense, and should not therefore hold himself too stiffly in
the matter of logic.

As with life and death so with design and absence of design or luck.
So also with union and disunion. There is never either absolute
design rigorously pervading every detail, nor yet absolute absence
of design pervading any detail rigorously, so, as between
substances, there is neither absolute union and homogeneity, not
absolute disunion and heterogeneity; there is always a little place
left for repentance; that is to say, in theory we should admit that
both design and chance, however well defined, each have an aroma, as
it were, of the other. Who can think of a case in which his own
design--about which he should know more than any other, and from
which, indeed, all his ideas of design are derived--was so complete
that there was no chance in any part of it? Who, again, can bring
forward a case even of the purest chance or good luck into which no
element of design had entered directly or indirectly at any
juncture? This, nevertheless, does not involve our being unable
ever to ascribe a result baldly either to luck or cunning. In some
cases a decided preponderance of the action, whether seen as a whole
or looked at in detail, is recognised at once as due to design,
purpose, forethought, skill, and effort, and then we properly