Fate.

Northland Age, Volume IV, Issue 49, 27 July 1908, Page 3

Fate.

(BY THE EBITOR.)

‘•Kismet.” It is written. One cnn sum up in these words the attitude of most of the natives of India toward every event of life. Hut I very much douht whether the very same may not be said of every man and woman who has ever reached the age of rational thought, not, by the way, that all ever do attain rational judgment. It is said of Dickens that in planning his novels 4hc whole actiou and line of conduct of each of his puppets was strictly detailed before he commenced writing; at no stage were the characters permitted to take charge of the story. At any rate oue of the few rough drafts —if not the only one—which is extant, that of “ The Old Curiosity Shop” gives incident by incident, nearly, the movement of the finished novel, liefore placing his men and women on the written page Dickens fixed their end, happiness, sorrow or death. And it must seem to many of us that so are the destinies of we worldlings shaped. “ There is a divinity which shapes our ends, rough hew then how we will.” But, in accepting this last as correct—and 1 think the major-

ity will agree with it —very few ‘ conscientiously examine into their own share in the courting, coercing and controlling of their own destiny. The end may be fixed but there must be so much in the method and manner of the rough hewing. To attribute to fate anything, everything, is to acknowledge the impossibility of individual worth and from such belief comes painful sloth, hopless want of effort, heartbreaking discontent and failure accepted. This is, of course, taking the extreme fatalist’s view which, I must acknowledge, appears somewhat unreasonable though unconsciously supported by most people. In major matters fate may be said to rule omnipotent but in the little things the tricks of fate blend curiously with our actions, “ Still fate !” says the fatalist but the average man adds the forceful little word “if ”. But it is the smaller details which make or mar, and success or failure can usually be traced to some unimportant or apparently insignificant trifle. Some years ago I was chatting with a most successful trainer jockey in India ; a great fatalist. “ It was just fate which sent me here,” he said, “ a cussed piece of nonsen-

sical foolishuess that lost me a

race I ought to have won and f a cantankerous lot of A. J. C. stewards who wouldn’t believe that I done my best. They told me I could stand down for twelve mouths and I said, then, that it was just my luck but I

know better now', for it was fate, the thing that is written as the natives say, and it sent me here.” Exactly so it is that fate w r orks, the trivial overpowering the important ; a seedling growing into a tree and deflecting the rippling stream into a new channel. It was an airy word spoken, almost lightly, midst laughter and jest, which sent me from England and a holiday frolic indirectly made New Zealand the country of my adoption. “ Just luck, pure luck,” says the Britisher but underlying it is the preordained. But one must differentiate between the preordained and the happening which comes from given cause. It was not luck or fate but calculable result which gave pain to the Parengarenga Maoris one w r ool season not so long ago. They should not, really, have put two or three hundred weight of large boulders into their wool bales. It was perhaps, the irony of fate —more likely a just appreciation of fitting punishment—that the British buyers should have returned the valueless stones to Parengarenga from London and mulcted the Maoris with all the costs incurred in their stony wool deal but we imagine that the wily natives expressed a strong opinion that it was d—d hard luck.

Is there any man who has lived who has not at one time or another felt that he held the key to his own fate in his hands ? But has ever that key proven the all powerful, the all conquerable that he believed it to be ? The inevitable “ if ” has come into the problem in some shape or other and, regretting but beaten, the man has had to acknowledge that human probability is not the invariable course of existence. One may shape one’s actions never so carefully and yet find that shrewd calculation has led only to the impossible and force of ciroumstances—in other words destiny, fate—has mastered in most easy fashion. A momentary neglect, a sudden carelessness, an unthinking word; these be the weapons of the unseen force rvliich rules the world and however cautiously the human being may rough hew his life the end is fixed, though perchance there may be something iu the manner in which we meet the ruling of destiny. Ugh ! Fate! We must all bow to it and unknowing pursue our lives unto the inevitable and unalterable end, *