CHESS OR CHANCE ? T HE incalculable element in life is
just now more prominent than it used to be. For one thing, perhaps we are more superstitious ; for another, in times of change and shuffle chance necessarily appears to play a bigger part. In the turmoil and crowd the connexions between cause and effect, which would be patent if there were room to trace them, are lost. The world. just now gives an impression of over-fullness. It is, of course, all a question of distribution, but that truth does not appear upon the surface. Wherever one looks one sees a dense mass of people all struggling for the things they want, of which there are not enough to go round. The poor are short of houses and of work, and those who once were well off are short of all that they once considered necessary to their estate. All the same, a minority in all classes manage to get what they want—more of it than they ever had before—and they often seem to get it by luck. Certainly there seems to be little obvious explanation of the successes and failures which rattle in our ears and deafen us with cries of lamentation and delight even in the bypaths of life once considered as safe as they were dull. " My luck ! " we say resignedly as the opportunity for advancement or gain in some form or other eludes us. " His luck ! " we exclaim in tones of sadness or congratulation as another man seizes the chance which was not for us.
We are inclined to think that at least one man in three is glad of this change of conditions. There was something heavy in the Victorian atmosphere which is gone. There is, as it were, more money upon the game than there used to be. The old theory that play counted in the long run for nearly everything is abandoned. The industrious apprentice stands his chance with his idle brother, and there is by no means as strong a probability as there used to be that the deserving candidate will marry the lady or succeed to the business. There is less poetic justice in the world. than there was, and the change has caused a good deal of mental exultation and a great deal of mental distress. Many men and women, perhaps most, have no gambling instinct. They would like that life should resemble a game of chess. They want a world in which desert alone wins, a world. in which if a man will really try he will really succeed, and in which no windfalls can be picked up by undeserving loiterers. Their Utopia woul4 be a city in which success was dealt out on a compre- hensible system, and they would grudge no man his place above themselves if it could be proved that his reward was a just one. The natural sportsman whose instinct forbids him to enjoy the chess of life they condemn. He does not want to play a game in which there are no honours, no trumps, and no hope of luck. Heaven would not be Heaven to such as he if there were in it no element of risk or surprise to excite its citizens. They hope that even there all men will not be judged " on their merits." The mysterious element in life is to them the wine of life. They do not want to know the reason of every happening. They think in their hearts that the craving for security which caused the Victorian to mistrust chance as he mis- trusted ghosts had something rather base about it. Fortune of war !—that is their watchword.
But apart from what people like to believe, we suppose that all men think, when they think their hardest, that there is no such thing as luck. They know that everything happens in accordance with a law, and that a mathe- matician could tell them if not all, at any rate a great deal about chance if only they could understand him. Most of us, however, do not want to think our hardest on the subject. We are afraid of finding ourselves in that terrible maze of contradictory certainties which surround the subjects of Free Will and Predestination or in the modem quagmire, worse by far than Bunyan's Slough of Despond, from the middle of which we must face the fact that the number of persons who will commit suicide next year and for what reasons can be calculated upon a law of averages. It is consoling to find that the mathema- ticians agree that the extent to which the conclusions of the learned and those of common experience agree on the subject of chance is considerable ; and turning away from the greater problems of existence, we take courage once more to examine the subject of luck by the light of nature. From the point of view of the man in the street the chief factor in luck would seem to be temperament. A buoyant temperament attracts luck as a rule, though now and then it may appear to be only a working substitute for it. Again, luck is the reward of faith, of a sort of pro- fane faith, that is, which we call self-reliance. Pessimism in all its forms would seem to repel luck : yet certain pessimists succeed in life. The few who do succeed have some gift which enables them to avoid darkening the atmosphere of the circle they are in as most of their co-doubters darken it. They are, as it were, the pessimists who consume their own smoke.
" Money goes where money is " is a shrewd observa- tion which throws a light on luck ; indeed, all popular variations upon the terrible saying " To him that hath shall be given' would appear unanswerably correct. They are all in accordance with the fact that runs of luck ' exist, and though they cannot be accounted for must in everything be counted on. Misfortunes seldom come singly any more than bits of luck do. Now and then, of course, we make a mistake between the two. Blessings in disguise are proverbially possible, but, speaking generally, the expression does no more than call attention to those abortive bits of ill-luck which seem to attempt to break the sequence of the lucky man's " run." Not very many people are lucky or unlucky all through life : the long lane turns at last if the gods allow the lucky fellow to live to old age. But, unfortunately, our capacity to experience " luck " diminishes with the years, though ill-luck finds us as susceptible as ever. New opportunities of work are no good to us. Money beyond a competence is of no use. Romance is over. We have lost our desire for adventure in any form. We want things to go on as they are, so long as they are fairly comfortable. But the power of misfortune does not weaken. Poverty is harder to endure in age than in youth. Friends are fewer and more cherished, and their loss is more overwhelming. Ill-health is more hopeless. Forced changes for the worse in habit and environment seem wellnigh unbearable. While, therefore, it is a mistake to call any man lucky till his death, we cannot console ourselves by declaring that the reverse is also true. Meanwhile, when all winnings are counted, the " chances " are still that the best player will retire with the heaviest purse, but those chances are 1e33 than they were.
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