"I NEVER HAD ANY LUCK"

Evening Star, Issue 17155, 23 September 1919, Page 3

"I NEVER HAD ANY LUCK"

Mr Leonard J. Martin, the man who has gained the title of the Linen King by his £4,000,000 purchase of linen from the Government, says, in tho 'Weekly Despatch '! "I never had any luck. I came up to London from the country when I was 18 with less than £2OO to my credit, and I have never had any luck, and I have never met a man who has succeeded' in any department in life who owe* his success to luck, or who has anything to thank 'his lucky stars' for. The existence of such a constellation may be doubted right'away: What people call 'luck' is just as inevitable in tne case of some men —and some women —as it is inevitable that coal ehpuld be found down a coal mine, or that apples should grow on.an apple tree. It is a natural and recurring circumstance to them; it is faithful to them as destiny, and just as inevitable. CHEMISTRY OF THE! BRAIN. "Just why one man's actions' are followed by success, while another man, who started as his apparent equal mentally, physically, and financially, is for ever hunted by failure, I cannot easily discover; but I believe that one day science, and probably chemical science, will solve the riddle. "When that time comes I am certain the question of 'luck' will be properly relegated among the ancient and derelict superstitions of the musty old agea of long ago. I am beginning to believe in the chemistry of the brain ; it is not improbable that before long our postwar scientists may discover that the human brain activities are the natural outcome of the action of something analogous to chemical fluids, and therefore brain actions may in time become subject to control and direction. It may, after all. not be an unreasonable theory that, all we see and hear and do may have a sort of chemical fluid influence on the brain, and. acting silently on our consciousness, produce certain results, leading to successful lies (or chronic luck, as some people call it). Here is- a rough and ready table of .present-day results. Tho expectation of success in all healthy young people at about 20 years of age is 100 per cent. Taking tho results arrived at at the age of 50, they work out something like this: Percentage of Degree of Success. Achievement. Complete success 3 Partial success (say, half of original expectations) ... 40 Quarter of original expecta-

tions 20 Respectable failures ... ♦.. 20 Total failures 1

"The people who are total failures say they never had any) 'luck.' My point is that the men who succeeded owed none of their success to 'lack.' Their achievement was just the apple on the apple tree, that's all. Everything in life is governed by law, and I do not believe that good fortune, or success, or those things that other people call ' luck are exempt from its orderly operations —and law knows no luck. Trie rough tablo_ of _ life results I have given above may in time afford the basis for analysis in a psychologist's laboratory, and he will l>e able to determine the exact ' chemical' influences which lead to 7 per cent, of total failures—total failures, that is, when results are measured against their original expectations. Every material part of the human body can be reduced to chemical parts. It may be only a step to apply chemical laws to that spark within us called consciousness, and everything that happens to us in our experience and all that happens to other people will have a logical explanation j and we shall be able to say that that ' something' happened, that that series of events occurred in exact response to some chemical influence on the brain of tie person ' concerned. Of one thing in life everyone may be assured: there is no good fortune can happen to anybodv without there being good reason for it. ,r