Chance and Luck

If there is any evil quality of human nature which, by its persistence, its wide-spreading and its mischievous influence, speaks of the inborn savagery of human nature, it is the greed for chance-won wealth. In all ages men have been moved by it. It has seemed so natural, that men have lost sight of its innate immorality. 'If I take my chance fairly with others and win,' the gambler argues, 'I have done no man wrong, not even myself or the members of my family. What I win I can regard as gain, not less legitimate than the profits on some business transaction. If other men are ruined, or if I run the risk of ruin myself, this is no more than happens all the time. Other men may be killed in various chance ways; I may myself be killed ere the day is out in some chance manner: why should I not, since I and others must incur the chances of life, raise other chance issues by which either gain or loss may result to others or to myself?'

It may be that false though this reasoning is as a defense, there is more of excuse in it than those imagine who use it. Beyond doubt the element of chance which enters into all lives, has had a most potent influence in molding the characters of all men. If we consider the multitudinous fancies and superstitions of men like sailors, farmers, and hunters, whose lives depend more on chance than those of men in other employments, and recognize this as the natural effect of the influence which chance has on their fortunes, we need not wonder if the influence of chance in molding the minds and characters of our ancestors during countless generations, should have produced a very marked effect on human nature. An immense number of those from whom I (for instance) inherit descent, must in the old savage days have depended almost wholly on chance for the very means of subsistence. When 'wild in wood' the savage (very far, usually, from being noble) ran, he ran on speculation. He might or might not be lucky enough to earn his living on any day by a successful chase, or by finding such fruits of the earth as would supply him with a satisfactory amount of food. He might have as much depending on chances which he could not avoid risking, as the gambler of today has when he 'sees red' and stakes his whole fortune on a throw of the dice or a turn of the cards. We cannot be doubtful about the effects of such chance influences on even the individual character. Repeated generation after generation they must have tended to fill men with a gambling spirit, only to be corrected by many generations of steady labor; and unfortunately, even in the steadiest work the element of chance enters largely enough to render the corrective influence of such work on the character of the race (as distinguished from the individual) much slower than it might otherwise be. Every man who has to work for a living at all, every man who has to depend in any way on business for wealth (which is different from working for a living) has to trust more or less to chance in many respects. So that nearly all men have their characters in some degree modified by this peculiarity of their environment. The inherited tendency of each one of us towards gambling, in some one or other of its multitudinous forms, is undoubtedly strengthened in this way; though fortunately it may be much more than correspondingly weakened by training, by thought, and by steady pursuance of life's proper work.