Most advances that we accomplish are forced upon us by circumstances with which we are discontented, and our happiness consists in recognizing that there is, in effect, no such thing as misfortune. There is no chance in the world: everything is the result of Energy; nothing ever happens by accident. I said once to a woman standing beside the coffin of her husband, trying to comfort her and trying to teach myself, “You know, this did not happen by chance.” “No,” she said, “I know that; if one chance got loose, it would wreck the world.” So it would. You toss up a coin and it seems to you to be chance whether it comes down heads or tails. It isn’t chance at all. If one thing happened by chance, you would know that it was the end of natural law. Suppose that the thing to be tossed were an iron plate, ten feet across by two feet thick, then the engineer could figure out just how many pounds of powder would turn it once and how many would turn it twice or three times; and, if you told him when he had adjusted his charge that it was chance which side would come up, he would say that you did not understand dynamics. He knows that there is no chance about it; that the number of turns depends exactly upon the amount of force, and how it is applied. So it is with the tossing of the penny; it may seem to be chance to us because we cannot measure or perceive the causes, but its fall is as directly and fixedly due to causes as the sinking of an ocean-liner. It is not likely that Charles Dickens would have chosen the hard childhood he had if he could have arranged his own life, but there is little room to doubt that much of his understanding and sympathy, much of the power that made him the novelist of the masses, was due to those experiences. Even though he may never have seen during his life how necessary those experiences were, nor accepted them philosophically, that did not alter their use. The work of the “evildoers” in giving Socrates hemlock to drink did not destroy Socrates’ usefulness; the death by the cross did not check the spread of the good news the Nazarene brought to man. Men have always stoned the prophets and killed those who would bring deliverance. This is an expression of the conservatism which is the balance-wheel of the race: if it were not for that, the leaders of the people would get so far in advance as to be clear out of sight. But the prophecies have been fulfilled, and, step by step, deliverance has been won. Moreover, whom one generation destroyed, succeeding generations have honored; it is impossible to get the rear rank in line with the vanguard. But wherein has evil triumphed or the law of good been set aside?