why one should
be rich and the other poor, we are well aware that the existence, side
by side, of excessive wealth and excessive misery, is due to human
injustice alone. In this wickedness neither gods nor stars have part.
And as for disease and mental weakness, when we shall have eliminated
from them what now is due to poverty, mother of most of our moral and
physical sorrows, as well as to the anterior, and by no means
inevitable, faults of the parents, then, though some measure of
persistent and unaccountable injustice may still remain, this relic of
mystery will very nigh go into the hollow of the philosopher's hand,
and there he shall, later, examine it at his leisure. But we of today
shall be wise in refusing to allow our life to be unnecessarily
darkened, or hedged round with imaginary maledictions and foes.

As far as ordinary luck is concerned, we shall do well to believe, for
the moment, that the history of our fortune (which is not necessarily
the history of our real happiness, since this may be wholly independent
of luck) is the history of our unconscious being. There are more
elements of probability in such a creed than in the assumption that the
stars, eternity, or the spirit of the universe are taking part in our
petty adventures; and it gives more spur to our courage. And this
idea--even though it may possibly be as difficult to alter the
character of our unconsciousness as to modify the course of Mars or of
Venus--still seems less distant and less chimerical than the other; and
when we have to choose between two probabilities, it is our imperative
duty to select the one that presents the least obstacles to our hopes.
Further, should misfortune be indeed inevitable, there would be I know
not what proud consolation in being able to tell ourselves that it
issues solely from us, and that we are not the victims of a malign will
or the playthings of useless chance that in suffering more than our
brothers we are perhaps only recording, in time and space, the
necessary form of our own personality. And so long as calamity do not
attack the intimate pride of man, he retains the force to continue the
struggle and accomplish his essential mission: which is, to live with
all the ardour whereof he is capable, and as though his life were of
greater consequence than any other to the destinies of mankind.

This idea is also more conformable to the vast law which restores to
us, one by one, the gods wherewith we h