“Slaves of Chance!” Of Chance? Have I the right word? Is it Chance which through millions of years has steadily guided the increasing purpose which runs through all nature, which has multiplied the organs of animals and widened the minds of men with the progress of the suns; which has disabled the armies of kings by the weaponless words of a peasant; which has confounded wisdom by folly and foiled strength by weakness; never anywhere losing sight of the goal, unseen of men but surely divined, toward which tends the Motion of the World? Chance? No. But by what other name shall I name it? Shall I take refuge in the jargon of the pulpit and call these “special providences?” Helpless evasion of the question! Impotent effort to distinguish between the special and the general designs of the Designer, obscuring the one central point to be kept in sight, that the special is the general and the general the special. But why seek a name? A name becomes a fetish as much as a stock or a stone, and men bow down to it and worship it with as much abasement of their better natures. Enough, if in the fates of mighty nations and in each lightest act of the individual life we recognize the same Directing Force, invisible but nowise unintelligible, rather speaking with sun-clear words to our enlightened reason of conscious purpose and definite intention, to which the iron laws of Nature and the wild vagaries of Chance are ductile instruments and obedient servants. This is the ultimate expression of abstract science and of that solid philosophy which is built on the inductive study of both nature and man. Its lesson to the individual is, that he is neither the helpless creature of necessity nor the slave of chance; that he is master of his immediate action, but of its consequences he is not master; that there are unseen forces at work arranging the incidents and accidents of his life, and these forces he can in no wise control; but if he is alert and diligent they cannot entangle his own individuality in the mesh of events, he can rise superior to them, can be _himself_, and win happiness to some degree in any surroundings; and he may go forward in the sublime and certain confidence that his existence is an essential part of an eternal plan, which asks neither faith nor authority for its recognition, for it is the logical condition of the very reason by which he knows that he is Himself and not another. * * * * * The calculus of probabilities has already destroyed the gods; if it could rule out the unexpected, it would promote man to their seats; but the fleshless face of old Time wears a perpetual though silent grin. * * * * *