16. But now observe the difference when we attempt to take the corresponding step in Probability. For ordinary propositions, universal or particular, substitute statistical propositions of what we have been in the habit of calling the 'proportional' kind. In other words, instead of asking whether the man will live for twenty years, let us ask whether he will live for one year? We shall be unable to find any universal propositions which will cover the case, but we may without difficulty obtain an abundance of appropriate proportional ones. They will be of the following description:--Of men aged 30, 98 in 100 live another year; of residents in India a smaller proportion survive, let us for example say 90 in 100; of men suffering from cancer a smaller proportion still, let us say 20 in 100.
Now in both of the respects to which attention has just been drawn, propositions of this kind offer a marked contrast with those last considered. In the first place, they do not, like ordinary propositions, either assert unequivocally yes or no, or else refuse to open their lips; but they give instead a sort of qualified or hesitating answer concerning the individuals included in them. This is of course nothing more than the familiar characteristic of what may be called 'probability propositions.' But it leads up to, and indeed renders possible, the second and more important point; viz. that these various answers, though they cannot directly and formally contradict each other (this their nature as proportional propositions, will not as a rule permit), may yet, in a way which will now have to be pointed out, be found to be more or less in conflict with each other.
Hence it follows that in the attempt to draw a conclusion from premises of the kind in question, we may be placed in a position of some perplexity; but it is a perplexity which may present itself in two forms, a mild and an aggravated form. We will notice them in turn.
17. The mild form occurs when the different classes to which the individual case may be appropriately referred are successively included one within another; for here our sets of statistics, though leading to different results, will not often be found to be very seriously at variance with one another. All that comes of it is that as we ascend in the scale by appealing to higher and higher genera, the statistics grow continually less appropriate to the particular case in point, and such information therefore as they afford becomes gradually less explicit and accurate.