Our conception of chance is one of law and order in large numbers; it is not that idea of chaotic incidence which vexed the mediaeval mind. - Karl Pearson

The great danger... not content with our real knowledge of the relation of the finite to the infinite, they slur over our vast ignorance by the help of the imagination. Myth supplies the place of true knowledge where we are ignorant of the connection between finite and infinite. Hence... most concrete systems of religion present us with a certain amount of knowledge but a great deal of myth.

It is not theory, but actual statistical experience, which forces us to the conclusion that, however little we know of what will happen in the individual instance, yet the frequency of a large number of instances is distributed round the mode in a manner more and more smooth and uniform the greater the number of individual instances. When this distribution round the mode does not take place... then we assert that some cause other than chance is at work.

[O]ur conception of Chance is now utterly different from that of yore. Where we cannot predict, where we do not find order and regularity, there we should now assert... that something else than Chance is at work. What we are to understand by a chance distribution is one in accordance with law, and one the nature of which can... be closely predicted.