BOOK I PART III
be necessarily determined to fall, and turn up
one of its sides, yet there is nothing to fix the
particular side, but that this is determined en-
tirely by chance. The very nature and essence
of chance is a negation of causes, and the leav-
ing the mind in a perfect indifference among
those events, which are supposed contingent.
When therefore the thought is determined by
the causes to consider the dye as falling and
turning up one of its sides, the chances present
all these sides as equal, and make us consider
every one of them, one after another, as alike
probable and possible. The imagination passes
from the cause, viz. the throwing of the dye,
to the effect, viz. the turning up one of the six
sides; and feels a kind of impossibility both of
stopping short in the way, and of forming any
other idea. But as all these six sides are incom-
patible, and the dye cannot turn up above one