CHANCE, a term we apply to events, to denote that they happen without any necessary or foreknown cause. See CAUSE.
Our aim is, to ascribe those things to chance, which are not necessarily produced as the natural effects of any proper cause: but our ignorance and precipitancy lead us to attribute effects to chance, which have a necessary and determinate cause.
When we say a thing happens by chance, we really mean no more, than that its cause is unknown to us: not, as some vainly imagine, that chance itself can be the cause of any thing.
The case of the painter, who, unable to express the foam at the mouth of a horse he had painted, threw his sponge in despair at the piece, and, by chance, did that which he could not before do by design, is an eminent instance of the force of chance: yet, it is obvious, all we here mean by chance, is, that the painter was not aware of the effect; or that he did not throw the sponge with such a view: not but that he actually did every thing necessary to produce the effect; inasmuch, that, considering the direction wherein he threw his sponge, together with its form, specific
Chance. specific gravity, the colours wherewith it was fineared, and the distance of the hand from the piece, it was impossible, on the present system of things, the effect should not follow.
Chance is frequently personified, and erected into a chimerical being, whom we conceive as acting arbitrarily, and producing all the effect whose real causes do not appear to us: in which sense the word coincides with the τυχη, fortuna, of the ancients.