organism (which is mainly determined by ancestral antecedents) is
greatly more important in determining its future than the conditions
of its environment, provided, of course, that these are not too
cruelly abnormal, so that good seed will do better on rather poor
soil, than bad seed on rather good soil; this alone should be enough
to show that cunning, or individual effort, is more important in
determining organic results than luck is, and therefore that if
either is to be insisted on to the exclusion of the other, it should
be cunning, not luck. Which is more correctly said to be the main
means of the development of capital--Luck? or Cunning? Of course
there must be something to be developed--and luck, that is to say,
the unknowable and unforeseeable, enters everywhere; but is it more
convenient with our oldest and best-established ideas to say that
luck is the main means of the development of capital, or that
cunning is so? Can there be a moment's hesitation in admitting that
if capital is found to have been developed largely, continuously, by
many people, in many ways, over a long period of time, it can only
have been by means of continued application, energy, effort,
industry, and good sense? Granted there has been luck too; of
course there has, but we let it go without saying, whereas we cannot
let the skill or cunning go without saying, inasmuch as we feel the
cunning to have been the essence of the whole matter.

Granted, again, that there is no test more fallacious on a small
scale than that of immediate success. As applied to any particular
individual, it breaks down completely. It is unfortunately no rare
thing to see the good man striving against fate, and the fool born
with a silver spoon in his mouth. Still on a large scale no test
can be conceivably more reliable; a blockhead may succeed for a
time, but a succession of many generations of blockheads does not go