only on the three pillars of Judgment, Industry, and Health. They point
out that I have omitted one vital factor--Luck. So widespread is this
belief, largely pagan in its origin, that mere fortune either makes or
unmakes men, that it seems worth while to discuss and refute this
dangerous delusion.

Of course, if the doctrine merely means that men are the victims of
circumstances and surroundings, it is a truism. It is luckier to be born
heir to a peerage and £100,000 than to be born in Whitechapel. Past and
present Chancellors of the Exchequer have gone far in removing much of
this discrepancy in fortune. Again, a disaster which destroys a single
individual may alter the whole course of a survivor's career. But the
devotees of the Goddess of Luck do not mean this at all. They hold that
some men are born lucky and others unlucky, as though some Fortune
presided at their birth; and that, irrespective of all merits, success
goes to those on whom Fortune smiles and defeat to those on whom she
frowns. Or at least luck is regarded as a kind of attribute of a man
like a capacity for arithmetic or games.

This view is in essence the belief of the true gambler--not the man who
backs his skill at cards, or his knowledge of racing against his
rival--but who goes to the tables at Monte Carlo backing runs of good or
ill luck. It has been defined as a belief in the imagined tendencies of
chance to produce events continuously favourable or continuously
unfavourable.

The whole conception is a nightmare of the mind, peculiarly unfavourable
to success in business. The laws of games of chance are as inexorable as
those of the universe. A skilful player will, in the long run, defeat a
less skilful one; the bank at Monte Carlo will always beat the