1. Probability and Chance, Fritz Mauthner's Studies of Improbability

You see what tremendously learned reflections one can engage in. You will have thought them quite learned enough to arrive at the logical conclusion: what must God not have had to keep in mind, if He wanted to put the world together out of all its elements, if producing Faust out of an upset typecase or the chance striking of typewriter keys represents such an improbability as to be practically out of the question? Therefore, says Mauthner, both the concept of chance and that of divine providence are inconceivable. For if the degree of probability in the case of Faust is so minuscule, one can certainly not presuppose in the world's case that it could have been the chance creation of an upsetting of a cosmic typecase, so to speak. But then, one can just as little presuppose God—for what wisdom would He not have had to possess to have built the world out of all its elements!