immediate
control because they are often the results of causes generated in the
past which we can no longer modify. And this brings us to a wider view
of this law of cause and effect.

If we look at the life history of an individual as it stretches out from
birth to death it presents a remarkable record of events that appear to
have no logical relationship to each other. In childhood, there may have
been either great happiness or great sorrow and suffering regardless of
the qualities of character we are considering, and there is nothing in
the present life of the child to explain either. The child itself may be
gentle and affectionate and yet it may be the recipient of gross abuse
and cruel misunderstanding. In maturity we may find still greater
mysteries. Invariably there are mingled successes and failures,
pleasures and pains. But when we come to analyze them we fail to find a
satisfactory reason for them. We see that the successes often arrive
when they are not warranted by anything that was done to win them, and
for the want of any rational explanation we call it "good luck." We also
observe that sometimes failure after failure comes when the man is not
only doing his very best but when all of his plans will stand the test
of sound business procedure. Baffled again we throw logic to the winds
and call it "bad luck."

Luck is a word we use to conceal our ignorance and our inability to
trace the working of the law. Suppose we were to ask a savage to explain
how it is that a few minutes' time with the morning paper enables one to
know what happened yesterday in London. He knows nothing of reporters
and cables and presses. He cannot explain it. He cannot even comprehend
it. But if he is a vain savage and does not wish to admit his ignorance
he might solemnly assert that the reason we know is because we are
lucky; and he would be using the word just as sensibly as we use it!

If by luck we mean chance, there is no such thing in this world. Chance
means chaos and the absence of law. From the magnificent, orderly
procession of a hundred million suns and their world systems that wheel
majestically through space down to the very atom, with all of its
electrons, the universe is a stupendous proclamation of the
all-pervading presence of law. It is a mighty panorama of cause and
effect. There is no such thing as chance.

What then _is_ good luck? We know that people do receive benefits which
they apparently have not earned