The Washington herald., 1916-12-11
Emperor Francis Joseph and
the Luck Myth.
BY ORIsoN SWEET MARDEN,

sible for the long roll of tragedies
which marked the life of the late
Emperor Francis Joseph. of Austria.
Modern superstition calls it luck
i'll luck.
When we consider some of the
awful events of the unhappy life
record of Francis Joseph-the tragic
fate of his only son, the Crown Prince
Rudolph, the assassination of his
wife, the murder of his nephew and
prospective heir, the Archduke Fran
els Ferdinand, followed by the war
now waging, the most appalling
tragedy in history-it is difficult to
believe that there is no such thing as
luck.
We all know people who go
through life with very little sickness,
with very little trouble in their fam
lilies or in their business or profes-
sional careers. Some protective pow
er seems constantly to accompany
and protect them from all harm. On
the other hand, there are many others
like Francis Joseph, whose whole
lives are filled with all sorts of mis-
fortunes, disasters, calamities and af-
flictions. This is one reason why
many people are very superstitious
about good luck and i'll luck; why
they believe that some are born un-
der lucky star and others are born
under an unlucky star; and that the
misfortunes of the latter are due to
their stars and not to themselves,
just as those born under lucky star
owe all the good fortune that comes
to them to their stars and not to
themselves.
There is no denying the fact that
there is such a thing as happening,
without any special merit of ones
own, to be in the right place at the
right time, and to that extent being
favored by fortune. The best runner
may be held back by distractions and
arrive at the drawbridge when it is
up, while the poor runner, meeting
with no obstacle, may arrived before,
when the way is clear and reach the
goal first. Every schoolboy knows
that several of our Presidents have
been elected largely by what we
might call accident, and that they
were not always the best men for
such high office.
But when every allowance is made
for accidents of this sort which favor
one and handicap another, the luck
theory is one that no rational being
will allow to influence his life.
A belief in luck is one of the worst
handicaps with which a man or a
woman can be afflicted, because it
makes one fatalist. And you can
not convince a fatalist that every
thing is not foreordained and ar
ranged for him. He does not be-
lieve that he can do very much in
the way of changing the course of
his destiny by his own acts. He be-
lieves that what will happen will hap
pen in spite of anything he can do,
and that nothing can happen which
is not foreordained.
Not long ago one of those fatalists
said to ME: Now, look here. my
friend, you believe in an Omniscient
Being; that He can look down the
years of my life and see what is go
ing to happen to me. Now if that is
so how could these things which are
going to happen be changed? Why.
no power on earth could change one
iota of my destiny"
This man never seems to have any
concern about his decisions, even in
important matters-where he will
live, for instance, or where his bust
ness will be located. For he says
that he is going to be in such a place
anyway, that is, that what is going
to happen to him will happen, and he
can't change it. That, for example,
supposing he should decide arbitrarily
that he would live in Chicago when
his horoscope located him in New
York, his decision would have no
effect in altering his location. He
holds that nothing he could do would
change the result, so there would be
no use in fighting against destiny. He
insists that if he is to be married he
will be married, if he is to rear a
family he will rear one and so on
down to every detail of his life.
In other words, this man seems to
think that his whole future is already
laid out and planned, without any
reference to his will or desires, and
that everything has got to happen in
just such way, and at such a time.
He says that he couldn't even pre-
vent his being drunkard if this was
fixed in his horoscope as a part of his
Now, could anything be more un-
fortunate or ambition destroying than
for man to feel that everything in
his life is predetermined. so fixed and