THE CONTROL OF CIRCUMSTANCES. 335 



THE CONTKOL OF CIKCUMSTA^CES. 



By WILLIAM A. EDDY. 



IN a previous article, we noticed that even circumstances which 

 seem to result in accumulations involving vast lapses of time are 

 seen to be temporary when considered with relation to very great 

 and to us inconceivable periods. The stability is apparent only, and 

 is due to our limited grasp of duration. The study of averages is 

 valuable as showing the proportion of control attainable through 

 knowledge of the limit of variation in certain kinds of events. It 

 would require something like omnipresent intelligence to cope with 

 the enormous variability in all events, so that were it not for the per- 

 ception of identity, repetition, the law of probability, we would be as 

 completely helpless in regard to circumstances as many claim we are. 

 In extending this question of averages, demonstrating the illusion of 

 chance, we see that the appliances of science and intelligence must 

 lessen helplessness and misery with every coming century, although, 

 owing to limitation of the individual, the control can never be any- 

 thing like complete. It is important that we form right ideas of the 

 control possible, so that we be neither like Don Quixote, who thought 

 his power almost without limit, nor like a fatalist who resigns himself 

 to the current of events. In the history of progress, we see that dur- 

 ing centuries some suffering might have been escaped by a more com- 

 plete knowledge of causes, as well as by better intellectual training 

 resulting in more foresight. The delayed relief was and is due to 

 crude methods of scientific thought and experiment, lack of that in- 

 sight or flash of analogy by which all great truths are discovered. 

 The power to group and combine complex results, shown by the most 

 advanced minds when working under favorable conditions, is hardly 

 sufficient for even a vague understanding of the development of dis- 

 eased conditions. The mind is led step by step toward the truth, by 

 means of scientific experiments. At last, Pasteur and others disclose 

 the laws which account for some kinds of progressive destruction in 

 the movements of organic or inorganic particles. 



As we begin to comprehend vaguely the laws of events, and the 

 importance of action as an element of modifying power — as we stand 

 back and include a great number of incidents in our generalization — 

 we see more relation between action and result. The direct impor- 

 tance of objective action, its immediate interest for us, is in consider- 

 ing the proportion of control which we can exert. This is one of the 

 most complicated problems, because special thwartings conceal the 

 control when we look from the " near point of view of daily life." 

 Several years of experience are required to demonstrate the propor- 

 tion of truth in the well-known business maxim that it is better to 



