Io Fortuna!

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

WE of to-day do not, as any part of our philosophy, believe in Fortune. Some of us consider every possible event as decided by the conscious providence of God; some of us regard all happenings as linked inevitably together in a logical infinity of cause and effect; and most of us perhaps think of the world about us as a sort of combination of the two, wherein at least nothing can fall by chance. And yet, though we admit abstractly this philosophy, it fails of application to our concrete circumstances. Doubtless, the coin falls at the will of God; but that will we can neither fathom nor forecast. Surely the turn of the card is due to natural causes, but to causes intricate and remote beyond our possible knowing. So that for practical purposes we dwell among continual accidents; and in no such very different case from our own children, for whom life is all one wild and wanton tissue of adventure. All things are dreamed of in our philosophy, but few are clearly seen: it may be true, but it does not fit the facts.

The child is forbidden an apple because mother says no; or because there is none on the table. Even the cultured mother who believes in reasoning with her child can hardly alter that, for he has but to ask why, half a dozen times, to reach the limit of her understanding. The child is given a toy because father has brought him one, or because it is his birthday. How may these good things be, that they may come about more often? And there the child goes hand in hand with all the saints and sages of the world up to the closed doors of that dark temple where the Sphinx, inscrutably smiling, answers the universal question with ‘Because.’

And so we are not after all much wiser than our forefathers; and we may well enough accept, for actual concerns, their fable of Lady Fortune with her wheel, wantonly false or fair, mocking her followers and favoring them who pay her small regard, sure only of changefulness. Ultimately false, it agrees none the less truly with our seeing, as a picture showing the world flat instead of round. Wiser still is that more ancient vision of affairs as governed by the gods, beyond and above whom lurks an arbitrary Fate. For it more represents our actual state, able to know and to control our destinies to some extent: while yet, through and over all, incalculable chance remains.

It is fashionable to deceive ourselves upon this point; in endeavoring to do so we have worn threadbare sundry fine quotations. If ‘man is man and master of his fate’ we must allow that he has failed somehow to solve the servant problem. ‘You can have what you want, if you want it enough ’ may serve to strengthen weak desires. But you will some day want a thing as much as you can bear, and remain wanting; while again some best thing in your life will come as a free gift, neither toiled nor longed for. Even Henley’s famous boast has a rather hollow sound, as of one crying aloud that nothing can make him cry. It was well for his head to be unbowed, no doubt; yet he might have been better pleased if it had not been bloody. We cannot face things as they are, for we cannot see them as they are; but we shall do as wisely, and perhaps as bravely, to face them as they appear.

And how to face them? The ancient wisdom bade us go against fortune as a gambler may, scorning her favor and her frown, striving to be neither elated nor downcast. But this is to turn down the light alike upon good and evil, and so become merely less alive. The later wisdom bids us believe by faith that all is well: cold comfort when we happen to be feeling far from well ourselves. And the most recent fashion bids us to bluff and bluster and pretend, with every ass flaunting a lion’s skin and every ostrich hiding from trouble. Perhaps the child is really wiser than all. At least, he is proverbially happiest, though he lives more than any of us among unreasonable accidents. For he looks backward without shame and forward without fear — passionately attentive to pleasure, and of pain as easily forgetful as may be. Weep he must, but in a moment you shall find him laughing. In the midst of both, he will make the most of his joys and the least of his sorrows. And his deepest secret is this, that he looks upon all fortune as adventure. For it is not for nothing that upon one stem have grown the two words Happen and Happiness.