People often talk as if human beings were crushed by sorrows and
misfortunes and tragic events. It is not so! We are crushed by
temperament. Just as Dr. Johnson said about writing, that no man was
ever written down but by himself, so we are the victims not of
circumstances but of disposition. Those who succumb to tragic events
are those who, like Mrs. Gummidge, feel them more than other people.
The characters that break down under brutalising influences, evil
surroundings, monotonous toil, are those neurotic temperaments which
under favourable circumstances would have been what is called artistic,
who depend upon stimulus and excitement, upon sunshine and pleasure. Of
course, a good deal of what, in our ignorance of the working of
psychological laws, we are accustomed to call chance or luck, enters
into the question. Ill-health, dull surroundings, loveless lives cause
people to break down in the race, who in averagely prosperous
circumstances might have lived pleasantly and reputably. But the deeper
we plunge into nature, the deeper we explore life, the more immutable
we find the grip of law. What could appear to be a more fortuitous
spectacle of collision and confusion than a great ocean breaker
thundering landwards, with a wrack of flying spray and tossing crests?
Yet every smallest motion of every particle is the working put of laws
which go far back into the dark aeons of creation. Given the precise
conditions of wind and mass and gravitation, a mathematician could work
out and predict the exact motion of every liquid atom. Just so and not
otherwise could it move. It is as certain that every minute
psychological process, all the phenomena that we attribute to will and
purpose and motive, are just as inevitable and immutable.

The other day I went by appointment to call on an elderly lady of my
acquaintance, the widow of a country squire, who has settled in London