There was no faintest sound, no ribbon of light coming under any of the doors which opened on the corridor, no other sign of human occupancy, but plainly and unmistakably the fresh tobacco smoke indicated someone had just lit a cigarette. The countryside seemed peaceful and contented. The musical notes of the Swiss cowbells drifted up on the calm air. The shadows deepened into dusk, and then finally into darkness. Ill do a corporate speech, for example, and we’ll all be sitting down to lunch afterward, and the CEO will suddenly stand up, and clink his glass for attention, and announce, I’ve got a surprise for you! Mr. Zannetti alsohypnotizes people!’ And I’m supposed to get up and turn an account executive into a chicken. 80 69 With the corrections and explanations now given, the doctrine of the causation of our volitions by motives, and of motives by the desirable objects offered to us, combined with our particular susceptibilities of desire, may be considered, I hope, as sufficiently established for the purposes of this treatise.[268] Before the accident, shed been a very good student. In fact, as I recall those days now, they form my happiest memories. Annie and I riding to school together on the bus, telling jokes and cracking wise with the other kids. Annie and I in class together, our hands popping up simultaneously whenever a teacher asked a question. My sister was the prettiest girl in the whole damn school, and I was her twin brother, and we were both smarter than anyone else around. We were The Gulliver Gang. My sister and I. We were twins. 147 But though it is a condition of the validity of every induction that there be uniformity in the course of nature, it is not a necessary condition that the uniformity should pervade all nature. It is enough that it pervades the particular class of phenomena to which the induction relates. An induction concerning the motions of the planets, or the properties of the magnet, would not be vitiated though we were to suppose that wind and weather are the sport of chance, provided it be assumed that astronomical and magnetic phenomena are under the dominion of general laws. Otherwise the early experience of mankind would have rested on a very weak foundation; for in the infancy of science it could not be known thatall phenomena are regular in their course. So I gathered, Ostrander announced affably, and Ill bet you forgot about the ping-pong tournament. Youve known this for the past sixteenyears? Rob, come with me. Youre going to get a good bath and then some sleep. You certainly look as though you could use both! Shes serious, Maggie said to me. But the little ping-pong ball had not bounced enough times. The match had ended, Ostrander had shown up, and there was nothing left for Rob to do but continue walking the dog. I already asked you why, Annie. For, since A exists in nature twice as often as B, in any 300 cases in which one or other existed, A has existed 200 times and B 100. But either A or B must have existed wherever M is produced; therefore, in 300 times that M is produced, A was the producing cause 200 times, B only 100, that is, in the ratio of 2 to 1. Thus, then, if the causes are alike in their capacity of producing the effect, the probability as to which actually produced it is in the ratio of their antecedent probabilities..