Fortune.
Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as fortune, chance, or
accident. All things are held together by invariable laws. Every event
takes place in accordance with law. Uniformity of law is the condition
and presupposition of all our thinking. The very idea of an event that
has no cause is a contradiction in terms to which no reality can
correspond, like the notion of two mountains without a valley between;
or a yard stick with only one end.
Relatively to us, and in consequence of the limitation of our knowledge,
an event is a result of chance or fortune when the cause which produced
it lies beyond the range of our knowledge. What we cannot anticipate
beforehand and what we cannot account for afterward, we group together
into a class and ascribe to the fictitious goddess Fortune; as children
attribute gifts at Christmas which come from unknown sources to Santa
Claus. In reality these unexplained and unanticipated events come from
heredity, environment, social institutions, the forces of nature, and
ultimately from God.
These things which project themselves without warning into our lives,
often have most momentous influence for good or evil over us; and the
proper attitude to take toward this class of objects is worthy of
consideration by itself.
THE DUTY.
+The secret of superiority to fortune.+--Some things are under our
control; others are not. It is the part of wisdom to concentrate our
thought and feeling on the former; working with utmost diligence to make
the best use of those things which are committed to us in the regular
line of daily duty, and treating with comparative indifference those
things which affect us from without. What we are; what we do; what we
strive for;--these are the really important matters; and these are
always in our power. What money comes to us; what people say about us;
what positions we are called to fill; to what parties we are invited; to
what offices we are elected, are matters which concern to some extent
our happiness. We should welcome these good things when they come. But
they affect the accidents rather than the substance of our lives. We
should not be too much bound up in them when they come; and we should
not grieve too deeply when they go. We should never stake our well-being
and our peace of mind on their presence or their absence. We should
remember that "The aids to noble life are all within."
This lesson of superiority to fortune, by regarding the things she has
to give as comparatively indifferent, is the great lesson of Stoicism.
Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca are the masters of this school.
Their lesson is one we all need to learn thoroughly. It is the secret of
strength to endure the ills of life with serenity and fortitude. And yet
it is by no means a complete account of our duty toward these outward
things. It is closely akin to pride and self-sufficiency. It gives
strength but not sweetness to life. One must be able to do without the
good things of fortune if need be. The really strong man, however, is he
who can use and enjoy them without being made dependent on them or being
enslaved by them. The real mastery of fortune consists not in doing
without the things she brings for fear they will corrupt and enslave us;
but in compelling her to give us all the things we can, and then
refusing to bow down to her in hope of getting more. This just
appreciation of fortune's gifts is doubtless hard to combine with
perfect independence. The Stoic solution of the problem is easier. The
really strong man, however, is he who
Gathers earth's whole good into his arms;
Marching to fortune, not surprised by her,
and the secret of this conquest of fortune without being captivated by
her lies in having, as Browning telling us,
One great aim, like a guiding star above,
Which tasks strength, wisdom, stateliness, to lift
His manhood to the height that takes the prize.
The shortcoming of the Stoics is not in the superiority to fortune
which they seek; but in the fact that they seek it directly by sheer
effort of naked will, instead of being lifted above subjection to
fortune by the attractive power of generous aims, and high ideals of
social service.
THE VIRTUE.
+The virtue which maintains superiority over external things and forces
is courage.+--In primitive times the chief form of fortune was physical
danger, and superiority to fear of physical injury was the original
meaning of courage. Courage involves this physical bravery still; but it
has come to include a great deal more. In a civilized community,
physical danger is comparatively rare. Courage to do right when everyone
around us is doing wrong; courage to say "No" when everyone is trying to
make us say "Yes"; courage to bear uncomplainingly the inevitable ills
of life;--these are the forms of courage most frequently demanded and
most difficult to exercise in the peaceful security of a civilized
community. This courage which presents an unruffled front to trouble,
and bears bravely the steady pressure of untoward circumstance, we call
by the special names of fortitude or patience. Patience and fortitude
are courage exercised in the conditions of modern life. The essence of
courage is superiority to outside forces and influences. When men were
beset by lions and tigers, by Indians and hostile armies, then courage
showed itself by facing and fighting these enemies. Now that we live
with civilized and friendly men and women like ourselves, courage shows
itself chiefly by refusing to surrender our convictions of what is true
and right just because other people will like us better if we pretend to
think as they do; and by enduring without flinching the rubs and bumps
and bruises which this close contact with our fellows brings to us.
+Moral courage.+--The brave man everywhere is the man who has a firm
purpose in his own breast, and goes forth to carry out that purpose in
spite of all opposition, or solicitation, or influence of any kind that
would tend to make him do otherwise. He does the same, whether men blame
or approve; whether it bring him pain or pleasure, profit or loss. The
purpose that is in him, that he declares, that he maintains, that he
lives to realize; in defense of that he will lay down wealth,
reputation, and, if need be, life itself. He will be himself, if he is
to live at all. Men must approve what he really is, or he will have none
of their praise, but their blame rather. By no pretense of being what he
is not, by no betrayal of what he holds to be true and right, will he
gain their favor. The power to stand alone with truth and right against
the world is the test of moral courage. The brave man plants himself on
the eternal foundations of truth and justice, and bids defiance to all
the forces that would drive him from it.
Wordsworth, in his character of "The Happy Warrior," has portrayed the
kind of courage demanded of the modern man:
'Tis he whose law is reason; who depends
Upon that law as on the best of friends.
Who if he rise to station of command
Rises by open means, and there will stand
On honorable terms, or else retire,
And in himself possess his own desire:
Who comprehends his trust, and to the same
Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim;
And therefore does not stoop nor lie in wait
For wealth, or honors, or for worldly state;
Whom they must follow, on whose head must fall
Like showers of manna, if they come at all.
'Tis finally the man, who, lifted high,
Conspicuous object in a nation's eye,
Or left unthought of in obscurity,
Who with a toward or untoward lot,
Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not,
Plays in the many games of life, that one
Where what he most doth value must be won:
Whom neither shape of danger can dismay,
Nor thought of tender happiness betray;
Who, not content that former worth stand fast,
Looks forward, persevering to the last,
From well to better, daily self-surpast:
This is the happy warrior; this is he
That every man in arms should wish to be.
THE REWARD.
+Courage universally honored.+--There is something in this strong,
steady power of self-assertion that compels the admiration of everyone
who beholds it. When we see a man standing squarely on his own feet;
speaking plainly the thoughts that are in his mind; doing fearlessly
what he believes to be right; or no matter how widely we may differ from
his views, disapprove his deeds, we cannot withhold our honor from the
man himself. No man was ever held in veneration by his countrymen; no
man ever handed down to history an undying fame, who did not have the
courage to speak and act his real thought and purpose in defiance of the
revilings and persecutions of his fellows.
THE TEMPTATION.
+To take one's fortune into his own hands and work out, in spite of
opposition and misfortune, a satisfactory career tasks strength and
resolution to the utmost.+--It is so much more easy to give over the
determination of our fate to some outside power that the abject
surrender to fortune is a serious temptation. Air-castles and
day-dreams, and idle waiting for something to turn up, are the feeble
forms of this temptation. The impulse to run away from danger, and the
impulse to plunge recklessly into risks, are the two forms of temptation
which lead to the more pronounced and prevalent vices.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
+Yielding to outward pressure, contrary to our own conviction of what is
true and right, is moral cowardice.+--In early times the coward was the
man who turned his back in battle. To-day the coward is the man who does
differently when people are looking at him from what he would do if he
were alone; the man who speaks what he thinks people want to hear,
instead of what he knows to be true; the man who apes other people for
fear they will think him odd if he acts like himself; the man who tries
so hard to suit everybody that he has no mind of his own; the man who
thinks how things will look, instead of thinking how things really are.
Whenever we take the determination of our course of conduct ultimately
from any other source than our own firm conviction of what is right and
true, then we play the coward. We do in the peaceful conditions of
modern life just what we despise a soldier for doing on the field of
battle. We acknowledge that there is something outside us that is
stronger than we are; of which we are afraid; to which we surrender
ourselves as base and abject slaves.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
+There are forces in the world that can destroy us; we must protect
ourselves against them.+--To be truly brave, we must be ready to face
these forces when there is a reason for so doing. We must be ready to
face the cannon for our country; to plunge into the swollen stream to
save the drowning child; to expose ourselves to contagious diseases in
order to nurse the sick.
To do these things without sufficient reason is foolhardiness. To expose
ourselves needlessly to disease; to put ourselves in the range of a
cannon, to jump into the stream, with no worthy end in view, or for the
very shallow reason of showing off how brave we can be, is folly and
madness. Doing such things because someone dares us to do them is not
courage, but cowardice.
+Gambling, the most fatal form of this fondness for taking needless
risks.+--The gambler is too feeble in will, too empty in mind, too
indolent in body to carve out his destiny with his own right hand. And
so he stakes his well-being on the throw of the dice; the turn of a
wheel; or the speed of a horse. This invocation of fortune is a
confession of the man's incompetence and inability to solve the problem
of his life satisfactorily by his own exertions. It is the most
demoralizing of practices. For it establishes the habit of staking
well-being not on one's own honest efforts, but on outside influences
and forces. It is the dethronement of will and the deposition of
manhood.
In addition to being degrading to the individual it is injurious to
others. It is anti-social. It makes one man's gain depend on another's
loss: while the social welfare demands that gains shall in all cases be
mutual. It violates the fundamental law of equivalence.
Since the essence of gambling is the abrogation of the will, every
indulgence weakens the power to resist the temptation. Gambling soon
becomes a mania. Honest ways of earning money seem slow and dull. And
the habit becomes confirmed before the victim is aware of the power over
him that it has gained. Every form of gain which is contingent upon
another's loss partakes of the nature of gambling. Raffling, playing for
stakes, betting, buying lottery tickets, speculation in which there is
no real transfer of goods, but mere winning or losing on the
fluctuations of the market, are all forms of gambling. They are all
animated by the desire to get something for nothing: a desire which we
can respect when a helpless pauper asks for alms; but of which in any
form an able-bodied man ought to be ashamed.
THE PENALTY.
+The shame of cowardice.+--Man is meant to be superior to things outside
him. When we see him bowing down to somebody whom he does not really
believe in; when we see him yielding to forces which he does not himself
respect; when living is more to him than living well; when there is a
threat which can make him cringe, or a bribe that can make his tongue
speak false--then we feel that the manhood has gone out of him, and we
cannot help looking on his fall with sorrow and with shame. The penalty
which follows moral cowardice is nowhere more clearly stated than in
these severe and solemn lines which Whittier wrote when he thought a
great man had sacrificed his convictions to his desire for office and
love of popularity:
So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore!
The glory from his gray hairs gone
Forevermore!
Of all we loved and honored, naught
Save power remains,--
A fallen angel's pride of thought,
Still strong in chains.
All else is gone, from those great eyes
The soul has fled:
When faith is lost, when honor dies,
The man is dead!
Then pay the reverence of old days
To his dead fame;
Walk backward, with averted gaze,
And hide the shame.