"Does Fortune favor fools? Or how do you explain the origin of the
proverb, which, differently worded, is to be found in all the
languages of Europe?"
This proverb admits of various explanations, according to the moods of
mind in which it is used. It may arise from pity, and the soothing
persuasion that Providence is eminently watchful over the helpless,
and extends an especial care to those who are not capable of caring
for themselves. So used, it breathes the same feeling as "God tempers
the wind to the shorn lamb"--or the more sportive adage, that "the
fairies take care of children and tipsy folk." The persuasion itself,
in addition to the general religious feeling of mankind, and the
scarcely less general love of the marvelous, may be accounted for from
our tendency to exaggerate all effects that seem disproportionate to
their visible cause, and all circumstances that are in any way
strongly contrasted with our notions of the persons under them.
Secondly, it arises from the safety and success which an ignorance of
danger and difficulty sometimes actually assists in procuring;
inasmuch as it precludes the despondence which might have kept the
more foresighted from undertaking the enterprise, the depression which
would retard its progress, and those overwhelming influences of terror
in cases where the vivid perception of the danger constitutes the
greater part of the danger itself. Thus men are said to have swooned
and even died at the sight of a narrow bridge, over which they had
ridden the night before in perfect safety, or at tracing the footmarks
along the edge of a precipice which the darkness had concealed from
them. A more obscure cause, yet not wholly to be omitted, is afforded
by the undoubted fact that the exertion of the reasoning faculties
tends to extinguish or bedim those mysterious instincts of skill,
which, tho for the most part latent, we nevertheless possess in common
with other animals.
Or the proverb may be used invidiously; and folly in the vocabulary of
envy or baseness may signify courage and magnanimity. Hardihood and
foolhardiness are indeed as different as green and yellow, yet will
appear the same to the jaundiced eye. Courage multiplies the chances
of success by sometimes making opportunities, and always availing
itself of them: and in this sense Fortune may be said to favor fools
by those who, however prudent in their own opinion, are deficient in
valor and enterprise. Again, an eminently good and wise man, for whom
the praises of the judicious have procured a high reputation even with
the world at large, proposes to himself certain objects, and adapting
the right means to the right end attains them; but his objects not
being what the world calls Fortune, neither money nor artificial rank,
his admitted inferiors in moral and intellectual worth, but more
prosperous in their worldly concerns, are said to have been favored by
Fortune and be slighted; altho the fools did the same in their line as
the wise man in his; they adapted the appropriate means to the desired
end, and so succeeded. In this sense the proverb is current by a
misuse, or a catachresis at least of both the words, Fortune and
Fools.
How seldom, friend, a good great man inherits
Honor or wealth with all his worth and pains!
It sounds like stories from the land of spirits,
If any man obtain that which he merits,
Or any merit that which he obtains.