COINCIDENCES, LUCK, CHANCE 



just ready to go up for their B. S. Exams.; and they to- 

 gether achieved a forty per cent, success in ten guesses 

 each, that is, they were right thirty-two times in a possible 

 eighty. This is the point for which I quote, and which I 

 wish to be remembered. But incidentally the whole series 

 shows that dowsers* reports made after testing the same 

 piece of land did not agree among themselves, and I may 

 add what Abinus said in his quaint wa)' in the year 1700. 



* I ween that no confoundeder thing is to be found in the world than 

 the divining rod business, for whatsoever is right and fit according to 

 one, the same is wrong and unfit according to others, until there is 

 no good to be presumed out of so great confusion." 



The Professor's further tests will be watched with in- 

 terest. As compared with Coincidence, Probability and 

 Chance, change in opinion and sentiment about " Luck " 

 commenced so early in historical time^ that it leaves but 

 little variation to be noted in the present-day point of view, 

 and there is no appreciable alteration in the word's meaning. 



Of all the early ordeals (primitive testing for crime) 

 as by fire, boiling water, the balance, poison, wager of 

 battle, etc., etc., of attempts to foreknow^ ; those, by lot 

 drawing, the most crude form for testing one's luck, I 

 know, seems to have been the first to weaken in the abor- 

 iginal faith. You now have to go far down in the social 

 scale to find one who will draw lots for proof, or who fully 

 believes in so trying his luck ; and certainly no common 

 sense person trusts the man who has a conceited belief in 

 his own luck, a state of mind on our part for which the 

 new psychology has ample explanation. The one curious 

 point I notice about this weakening confidence in personal 

 good luck is, that apparently it does not at present decrease 

 gambling. I have no personal experience of its fascina- 

 tions, and therefore cannot " speak by the card " but when 

 a wave of moral legislation made the common old fashioned 

 sweepstake just as criminal as any other form of lottery, it 

 quite unexpectedly seems to have increased instead of de- 

 creased the mania for betting, by forcing the poorer to 



