r all, the one
supreme value they possessed? There are many explanations of this
tragedy, for tragedy it is, and not the least of them is, that so many
young men have but one conception, one definition of success. These
are men, and one is tempted to think at times that they are not so much
a class as a people, who want material success and seek nothing else.
They have no other standard by which to judge the thing behind the
word. Not what we are, but what we have, if the latter is substantial
and declarative, is the only idea which multitudes have of success. In
a clever character-study of a well-known public man we are told that,
"As far as he has a philosophy at all, it is this, that merit rides in
a motor-car." It is a definition which fosters the impression that
success can be secured the more quickly and surely by methods that are
bound up with smartness, chance, or luck.

It is with the last of these I would come into somewhat close quarters.
And let me admit, in the first place, that there is such a thing as
luck, using the word in its common acceptation. In what is called a
scientific treatment of the subject in hand I ought to say, as exactly
as I can, what I myself understand by luck. It will leave abundance of
room for criticism if I venture to define it--as some advantage that
comes to a man independent of his moral worth, his native gifts, or of
any equivalent he has rendered for it of industry and self-denial.
That some people have such an advantage it would be useless to deny.
Two youths, let us say, enter a business house about the same age, and
at the same time. They are, as near as can be, equally matched in
equipment to command success. In this respect there is little to
choose between them. One begins entirely on his merits; he has no
influence behind him to open doors before him as by some invisible
hand. The other has influence; no matter what it is, or how it works,
he has it, and it operates distinctly in his favour. A few years
after, and the latter has far out distanced the former in position,
salary, and outlook. And the reason is not the capacity of either; it
is the arbitrary advantage, the piece of luck that one has had over the
other from the start. "He has not much ability," I heard it remarked
lately of a young fellow who, just having been licensed to preach, had
also received a "call" to an influential church, and the remark
elicited the significant answer: "No, but wheth