§ 10. There is a class of cases in apparent opposition to some of the statements in this chapter, but which will be found, when examined closely, decidedly to confirm them. I am walking, say, in a remote part of the country, and suddenly meet with a friend. At this I am naturally surprised. Yet if the view be correct that we cannot properly speak about events in themselves being probable or improbable, but only say this of our conjectures about them, how do we explain this? We had formed no conjecture beforehand, for we were not thinking about anything of the kind, but yet few would fail to feel surprise at such an incident.
The reply might fairly be made that we had formed such anticipations tacitly. On any such occasion every one unconsciously divides things into those which are known to him and those which are not. During a considerable previous period a countless number of persons had met us, and all fallen into the list of the unknown to us. There was nothing to remind us of having formed the anticipation or distinction at all, until it was suddenly called out into vivid consciousness by the exceptional event. The words which we should instinctively use in our surprise seem to show this:—‘Who would have thought of seeing you here?’ viz.
Who would have given any weight to the latent thought if it had been called out into consciousness beforehand? We put our words into the past tense, showing that we have had the distinction lurking in our minds all the time. We always have a multitude of such ready-made classes of events in our minds, and when a thing happens to fall into one of those classes which are very small we cannot help noticing the fact.
Or suppose I am one of a regiment into which a shot flies, and it strikes me, and me only. At this I am surprised, and why? Our common language will guide us to the reason. ‘How strange that it should just have hit me of all men!’ We are thinking of the very natural two-fold division of mankind into, ourselves, and everybody else; our surprise is again, as it were, retrospective, and in reference to this division. No anticipation was distinctly formed, because we did not think beforehand of the event, but the event, when it has happened, is at once assigned to its appropriate class.
§ 11. This view is confirmed by the following considerations. Tell the story to a friend, and he will be a little surprised, but less so than we were, his division in this particular case being,—his friends (of whom we are but one), and the rest of mankind. It is not a necessary division, but it is the one which will be most likely suggested to him.
Tell it again to a perfect stranger, and his division being different (viz.
we falling into the majority) we shall fail to make him perceive that there is anything at all remarkable in the event.
It is not of course attempted in these remarks to justify our surprise in every case in which it exists. Different persons might be differently affected in the cases supposed, and the examples are therefore given mainly for illustration. Still on principles already discussed (Ch. VI.
§ 32) we might expect to find something like a general justification of the amount of surprise.
§ 12. The answer commonly given in these cases is confined to attempting to show that the surprise should not arise, rather than to explaining how it does arise. It takes the following form,—‘You have no right to be surprised, for nothing remarkable has really occurred. If this particular thing had not happened something equally improbable must. If the shot had not hit you or your friend, it must have hit some one else who was à priori as unlikely to be hit.’