CHANCE

Otago Witness, Issue 3755, 2 March 1926, Page 81

CHANCE

By Colonel Lynch. (Fob the Witness.) V. Chance is so important in our worldly affairs that it has led a French philosopher to say that most things in human life are controlled by the god, “Hazard.” Possibly that saying is a little exaggerated, but the more we learn of the inner history of the people we know, the more are we inclined to find something wonderful in the mere chance that has given a decisive turn to the individual life. By chance, I do not mean the same here as luck or opportunity. A man may be lucky in winning the first prize m a lottery, but this luck has followed his action in buying a ticket in the lottery, and he has been expecting some outcome of the venture; but by chance I mean something not reckoned on, for good or bad, that suddenly makes its appearance upon our path. This is not what Gray means in his Elegy when he muses: “Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest. Some Cromwell giltless of his country’s blood.” In these instances, and others, the poet recognises the possession of talents that only wait for development if the opportunity be presented; but chance is something connected not at all with merit, and it is in this aspect of it that its fascination is contained. The idle dreaming schoolboy—for it was probably a* schoolboy— who invented the story of Aiaddin felt this more or less obscurely. He did not want to endow his hero with any special qualities—for looked at closely Aladdin was far from being a good boy—he simply wanted some divine hazard to come down from the skies and point out to him the way to riches, powder, brilliancy, success, and all without work. There is a sense in the story that Alladin was chosen simply because he was Alladin. The stern old Rbmans, not at all a dreamy, idle people, had something of the same feeling about chance, for they regarded a person favoured in this way as one designated by the deities; and they ought to know. Ask one of your acquaintances, even a person whose life is apparently quite uninteresting, to tell you his story. If he enters deeply enough into it he could dwell upon the chances it contains, and he himself will feel the wonder and the peculiar fascination of the light, airy things that in the end have seemed such powerful influences. A greengrocer will tell you that as a young boy, driven by poverty at home produced by a series of hard strokes of fate, he came to London not knowwhat to do. He saves, from falling, a man who has slipped on an orange peel; the man has a greengrocers shop, and so it happens that they want a boy. “I went into the shop, and I’ve been with them sixty years, and never left this street!” He has been like one of the family and their fortunes are his fortunes. A talented young man is jilted by a frivolous girl, and he can think of nothing better than suicide. He goes to a remote part of the beach and finds a cave, he is ready to jump into the water, when suddenly he sees an eye looking at him intently. He stops, then he approaches, he finds that it is really the hollow socket of an eye of a fossil icthyosaurus. He ponders. He wonders how it got there. He finds it interesting to think out this problem. In the end lie finishes as a renowned geologist, and he laughs at his own adventure. A strange chance again was that which saved out of wreck on lonely Scottish coast a little babv girl, washed ashore in her cot, the sole survivor. This girl was adopted by a laird’s family whose name she took—Gordon. When she was a young woman another wreck took place at the same place, and a man was washed ashore, the sole survivor. He proved to be her father. A romance of the Scottish peerage is attached to this tale, and by what marvellous chance! What is chance? In one aspect almost everything in our lives is dhance. in another we may be sure that nothing is ordered bv mere chance. To a ' with its short life, the ticking of a clock, or the arrival of the milkboy—all matters orderly in well regulated families—would - anpear chance ; and so with us, we simply dir> into a great scheme of things of which the laws are, for the most part, beyond our ken. and our ignorance we veil by t word, chance.