Chapter Ten Why do you suppose that is? Thats right. You were safe there, weren’t you? I guess she hears voices. The proposition is Singular, when the subject is an individual name. The individual name needs not be a proper name.The Founder of Christianity was crucified, is as much a singular proposition as “Christ was crucified. She was already wearing a look I would come to know only too well in later years. A tight little mouth, a frown creasing her brow, puzzlement and suspicion in the green eyes, helplessness beginning to border on panic. He told Madame the foie gras was delicious and that he would be back to finish it. Then he left the dining room and hurried out through the front door into the porch. And stopped. A wall of rain was pelting down even harder than before. There was another brilliant flash of lightning and it was followed, almost instantly, by a massive crash of thunder. It was as if the sky above him had been torn apart. This question may be otherwise stated in more familiar terms: After how many and what sort of instances may it be concluded that an observed coincidence between two phenomena is not the effect of chance? Now, the Hypothetical Method suppresses the first of the three steps, the induction to ascertain the law; and contents itself with the other two operations, ratiocination and verification; the law which is reasoned from being assumed instead of proved. Buck stayed with his martinis, but I ordered a full bottle of Chardonnay, and poured for my sister and Jessie, and then for myself. We toasted again, this time to celebrate the news that Bucks work would be exhibited n a Kennebunkport gallery this coming summer. § 2. When the laws of the causes have been ascertained, and the first stage of the great logical operation now under discussion satisfactorily accomplished, the second part follows; that of determining from the laws of the causes what effect any given combination of those causes will produce. Thisis a process of calculation, in the wider sense of the term; and very often involves processes of calculation in the narrowest sense. It is a ratiocination; and when our knowledge of the causes is so perfect as to extend to the exact numerical laws which they observe in producing their effects, theratiocination may reckon among its premises the theorems of the science of number, in the whole immense extent of that science. Notonly are the most advanced truths of mathematics often required to enable us to compute an effect, the numerical law of which we already know; but, even by the aid ofthose most advanced truths, we can go but a little way. In so simple a case as the common problem of three bodies gravitating toward one another, with a force directly as their mass and inversely as the square of the distance, all the resources of the calculus have not hitherto sufficed to obtain any general solution, but an approximate one. In a case a little more complex, but still one of the simplest which arise in practice, that of the motion of a projectile, the causes which affect the velocity and range (for example) of a cannon-ball may be all known and estimated: the force of the gunpowder, the angle of elevation, the density of the air, the strength and direction of the wind; but it is one of the most difficult of mathematical problems to combine all these, so as to determine the effect resulting from their collective action. What is it? Get on with it, Hannon said. Arent they? Annie said, smiling. And John Forrester knew that he was not unscathed, that he had lost a portion of something that was very precious, and of great rarity. One of thems the Wendel woman! Hazel told me!.