Sharp County record., 1888-03-22
CONCERNING LUCK.
An Unscientific and an Unreason-
able Belief.

Belief in luck is equally unscientitlc
and unreasonable. The average. mind,
which has ever been an illogical mind,
draws no distinction between the OBJ
served ill-luck or good luck which
may be expected to continue. 1t IS
this trust in luck, this expectation
based on past events, which is un-
scientific and illogical, not the recog
nition of the fact that such and such
men have been lucky or unlucky in
the past This last is a certainty; the
belief based on it by the average mind
is absurdity.
1t may seem harsh to say that be-
liefs Of this sort, which are entertained
by ninety-nlne men IN hundred, in
dictate n weak place in the brain. But
insomuch as more than one profound
philosopher has expressed the belief
that every man has some weak place
in the brain Gas each man would ad-
nit of himself if he tested all his
beliefs and compared them with those
of his felIow-men passions ately), to
saw that faith in luck and fetishes in
dicates mental flaw is merely to say
that the weak place in the average
brain includes this particular weak
ness.
Consider the case of believer in
luck actually putting his belief to the
test-not merely as to its correctness,
but rs to his own faith in it, which
may not perhaps be 50 real as he inn
agines. Take rs q concrete exam
pie gambler at San Carlo,
who has been having a great
run of luck. An onlooker, pos
sessed with the belief in luck, begins
TO regard this player rs one of the
lucky whose fortunes he will do we'll
to follow in order that the luck may
be, as it were, reflected upon himself
But his mind is divided by several
thoughts. In the first place, he is
not altogether sure that the gambler 5
good luck is likely to be steady. The
longer he notes its continuance the
more satisfied he becomes on this
point Yet he knows or thinks he
knows that even the steadiest luck has
its limit; and the longer he has looked
on and watched success after success
the more anxious he becomes lest this
limit should be close at hand. He
wishes TO share the successful gam
bler's rood fortune; but he fears lest,
at the very moment when he makes
the attempt, that fortune will for the
time turn, and he will reap loss only
and no gain. These doubts,
which every outsider in such case
experiences, show that IN reality there
is no faith in the lucky gambler S luck.
The mind unconsciously works more
correctly than the man thinks. He
would say, at the very moment he is
perplexed by such doubts, that he has
full faith in the gamblers lucki but
he has not; he only thinks he has.
If, overcoming his doubts, he joins
in the play. backing always the same
color as the heretofore lucky gambler,
he is bound to find either his hopes or
his fears confirmed. Yet whichever
event happens, his faith in luck will be
confirmed. He will recognize in success
new evidence of the power of luck; in
failure, new evidence of the fact that
luck must change atlast His illogical
beliefs about luck combine the two
contrary convictions that luck may be
trusted to continue and that
luck can not continue forever;
yet he never practices contra
hiction. though when the trial
comes it is always a toss-up in his
mind (the metaphor is in this connec-
ton particularly ap propriate) whether
he will back the luck or back the
change, and he never notices that
this doubt implies the absolute nom
reality of the faith he supposes to be
steadfast and assured.
A believer in luck will tell you Of
odd condolences which seem to con-
firm his belief; but he will never
think Of telling you, nor does he
ever inquire himself, how many cases
were involved from among which the
condolences he mentions occurred.
If man tossed six ten times run
ming with a single die, or double
SKIES five times, or "head' Gn coin
tossing fifty times the event would
seem most remarkable; and if
it was observed alone, or as
occurring in few trials,
we might justly be surprised. In fact,
scarcely any onlooker could fail to in
fer that the die or dice were loaded in
the first two cases. or the coin double
headed in the second and yet so en-
tirely does the number of trials modi-
fy our opinion that if in each case only
q sufficient number of trials were