28 
of whose action we are ignorant, the accuser should re 
member that Mr. Darwin himself uses chance in three 
different senses. He says :— 
“ I was so convinced that not even a stripe of colour appears from 
what is commonly called chance, that I was led .... to ask 
Colonel Poole whether such face stripes ever occurred in the 
eminently striped Kattywar breed of horses, and was answered 
in the affirmative.”—{Origin of Species, p. I2Q.) 
Here he understands by chance “ what happens without 
necessary cause.” 
Again, when he explains that in using the word spon 
taneous he only means to assert his ignorance of the 
nature of the cause, in whose existence he firmly believes, 
he adopts another definition of cause, viz.: “ what happens 
through a definite law, concerning the action of which we 
are ignorant.” 
But there is a third sense in which Mr. Darwin uses the 
word chance. 
“ In all the foregoing cases, the insects, in their original state, no 
doubt presented some rude and accidental resemblance to an object 
commonly found in the stations frequented by them.”—(Origin of 
Species, p. 182.) 
Here he adopts the definition of chance, which regards 
it as the coincidence of two sets of phenomena which have 
been produced by the definite action of the laws of nature. 
“Chance is the combination of several systems of causes which are 
developed each in its own series independently of the others.” 
“All the phenomena of nature are linked in the bond of cause and 
effect ; but all these phenomena do not form a single indefinite chain 
in which each phenomenon would come to occupy a place in its turn, 
and where there would only be room for a single phenomenon at a 
time. No ! at one and the same moment there is an infinite number 
of phenomenal series which take place at all points of the globe and 
of the universe. These simultaneous phenomenal series are some 
times parallel and sometimes oblique. Representing these phenomenal 
series by lines, the points where they meet are points of coincidence.