ends. Nature never breaks out
of its place. It has no such power--but human nature has. Man has
enough free-will to make him responsible for what he does with it, and
in the exercise of this mighty prerogative enters the element of chance
or luck. We cannot establish free-will by rules of logic, we cannot
gainsay it on the score of conviction. It helps us to interpret the
great in human life and history, and what is sometimes even more to the
purpose, it helps us to account for the little. As it has been well
said: "It would save us much mental perplexity if we could assert
without qualification that all is law, that everything happens as God
ordains."

But God cannot make two mountains without a valley between; and He
cannot give us free-will and withhold from us at the same time the
freedom to make mistakes. The contradictions in human life do not
yield to verbal simplicities, and, whether we like it or not, we have
to acknowledge that this something called luck is a force in human
events.

But let me say, in the second place, that there is nothing more easy
than to exaggerate its extent and importance. Out of a hundred
happenings that are generally attributed to luck, if we could find the
genesis of each one and trace its evolution or unfolding, we should
probably not find more than one that could be associated with the
things that happen by chance. The case of a man who achieved what is
called a "lucky fluke" out of a piece of spoiled cloth is perhaps the
only instance of its kind on record in the history of cloth
manufacture. I have admitted that there are cases where advantage
falls to a man which cannot be explained by anything he deserves, or
has done to win it. And the advantage, such as it is, often works
untold hurt as an example. Just as the winnings of one gambler may
tempt a hundred others to their undoing, so a single case of coveted
luck is apt to encourage young men to transfer their hopes of success
in many directions, from law to luck. You see here and there a man who
accumulates a large fortune from beginnings that look as much like pure
chance as was that piece of spoiled cloth. You see men close to you
put into positions that have been secured, not by training or ability
to fill them, but by the accident of influence, or, as you may think,
by even more reprehensible methods; and your first impulse is to say
that it is not merit but luck that holds the better cards. But let the
im