LIFE AND CHANCE 
occur the slight local differences owing to differences 
in environment. No doubt extraordinary men are 
in a measure the result of happy accident. There 
are determining or favoring factors — race, climate, 
family inheritance, and so on — and there are modi- 
fying and fortuitous factors in the daily lives and 
habits of the parents and in the social conditions. 
The web of human life is so complex, so many influ- 
ences and inheritances converge and unite in the 
genesis of every life, that the elements of chance 
or fortune inevitably play a part. The malformed, 
the underwitted, the monstrosities, the still-born, 
all afford evidence of how the plans of Nature are 
thwarted or marred by accident. This factor of 
chance invades even the life of the cells, and occa- 
sionally some part is absent or defective. 
v 
The forms and distributions of bodies in inorganic 
nature are not important; any other scheme or re- 
arrangement would do just as well. The wonderful 
monumental and architectural rock-forms in the 
great Southwest are purely a matter of chance — 
that is, they serve no special purpose, though, given 
the kind of rock, and the conditions, they are inevi- 
' table; they are fated to be thus and not otherwise. 
But the men and women who make long journeys to 
view the marvelous spectacle are not in the same 
way a matter of chance, and their going thither is 
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