luck

86:1.1Aside from the nat­u­ral wor­ship urge, early evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion had its roots of ori­gin in the hu­man ex­pe­ri­ences of chance—so-called luck, com­mon­place hap­pen­ings. Prim­i­tive man was a food hunter. The re­sults of hunt­ing must ever vary, and this gives cer­tain ori­gin to those ex­pe­ri­ences which man in­ter­prets as good luck and bad luck. Mis­chance was a great fac­tor in the lives of men and women who lived con­stantly on the ragged edge of a pre­car­i­ous and ha­rassed ex­is­tence.

• good l. viewed as harbinger of calamity

86:1.2The lim­ited in­tel­lec­tual hori­zon of the sav­age so con­cen­trates the at­ten­tion upon chance that luck be­comes a con­stant fac­tor in his life. Prim­i­tive Uran­tians strug­gled for ex­is­tence, not for a stan­dard of liv­ing; they lived lives of peril in which chance played an im­por­tant role. The con­stant dread of un­known and un­seen calamity hung over these sav­ages as a cloud of de­spair which ef­fec­tively ec­lipsed ev­ery plea­sure; they lived in con­stant dread of do­ing some­thing that would bring bad luck. Su­per­sti­tious sav­ages al­ways feared a run of good luck; they viewed such good for­tune as a cer­tain har­bin­ger of calamity.

• bad l. more memorable than good l.

86:1.3This ever-pres­ent dread of bad luck was par­a­lyz­ing. Why work hard and reap bad luck—noth­ing for some­thing—when one might drift along and en­counter good luck—some­thing for noth­ing? Un­think­ing men for­get good luck—take it for granted—but they painfully re­mem­ber bad luck.

86:1.4Early man lived in un­cer­tainty and in con­stant fear of chance—bad luck. Life was an ex­cit­ing game of chance; ex­is­tence was a gam­ble. It is no won­der that par­tially civ­i­lized peo­ple still be­lieve in chance and evince lin­ger­ing pre­dis­po­si­tions to gam­bling. Prim­i­tive man al­ter­nated be­tween two po­tent in­ter­ests: the pas­sion of get­ting some­thing for noth­ing and the fear of get­ting noth­ing for some­thing. And this gam­ble of ex­is­tence was the main in­ter­est and the su­preme fas­ci­na­tion of the early sav­age mind.

86:1.5The later herders held the same views of chance and luck, while the still later agri­cul­tur­ists were in­creas­ingly con­scious that crops were im­me­di­ately in­flu­enced by many things over which man had lit­tle or no con­trol. The farmer found him­self the vic­tim of drought, floods, hail, storms, pests, and plant dis­eases, as well as heat and cold. And as all of these nat­u­ral in­flu­ences af­fected in­di­vid­ual pros­per­ity, they were re­garded as good luck or bad luck.

86:1.6This no­tion of chance and luck strongly per­vaded the phi­los­o­phy of all an­cient peo­ples. Even in re­cent times in the Wis­dom of Sol­o­mon it is said: “I re­turned and saw that the race is not to the swift, nor the bat­tle to the strong, nei­ther bread to the wise, nor riches to men of un­der­stand­ing, nor fa­vor to men of skill; but fate and chance be­fall them all. For man knows not his fate; as fishes are taken in an evil net, and as birds are caught in a snare, so are the sons of men snared in an evil time when it falls sud­denly upon them.”

• term coined to cover inexplicable

86:2.5But to con­tinue to as­cribe things dif­fi­cult of com­pre­hen­sion to super­nat­u­ral causes is noth­ing less than a lazy and con­ve­nient way of avoid­ing all forms of in­tel­lec­tual hard work. Luck is merely a term coined to cover the in­ex­pli­ca­ble in any age of hu­man ex­is­tence; it des­ig­nates those phe­nom­ena which men are un­able or un­will­ing to pen­e­trate. Chance is a word which sig­ni­fies that man is too ig­no­rant or too in­do­lent to de­ter­mine causes. Men re­gard a nat­u­ral oc­cur­rence as an ac­ci­dent or as bad luck only when they are des­ti­tute of cu­rios­ity and imag­i­na­tion, when the races lack ini­tia­tive and ad­ven­ture. Ex­plo­ration of the phe­nom­ena of life sooner or later de­stroys man’s be­lief in chance, luck, and so-called ac­ci­dents, sub­sti­tut­ing there­for a uni­verse of law and or­der wherein all ef­fects are pre­ceded by def­i­nite causes. Thus is the fear of ex­is­tence re­placed by the joy of liv­ing.

• l. regarded as whimsical reaction of spirit world

86:2.6The sav­age looked upon all na­ture as alive, as pos­sessed by some­thing. Civ­i­lized man still kicks and curses those inan­i­mate ob­jects which get in his way and bump him. Prim­i­tive man never re­garded any­thing as ac­ci­den­tal; al­ways was ev­ery­thing in­ten­tional. To prim­i­tive man the do­main of fate, the func­tion of luck, the spirit world, was just as un­or­ga­nized and hap­haz­ard as was prim­i­tive so­ci­ety. Luck was looked upon as the whim­si­cal and tem­per­a­men­tal re­ac­tion of the spirit world; later on, as the hu­mor of the gods.

• good or bad l. became associated with good or bad spirits

86:6.4As evo­lu­tion pro­gressed, good luck be­came as­so­ci­ated with good spir­its and bad luck with bad spir­its. The dis­com­fort of en­forced adap­ta­tion to a chang­ing en­vi­ron­ment was re­garded as ill luck, the dis­plea­sure of the spirit ghosts. Prim­i­tive man slowly evolved re­li­gion out of his in­nate wor­ship urge and his mis­con­cep­tion of chance. Civ­i­lized man pro­vides schemes of in­sur­ance to over­come these chance oc­cur­rences; mod­ern sci­ence puts an ac­tu­ary with math­e­mat­i­cal reck­on­ing in the place of fic­ti­tious spir­its and whim­si­cal gods.

• good or bad l. became associated with good or bad spirits

87:4.1Ghost fear was the foun­tain­head of all world re­li­gion; and for ages many tribes clung to the old be­lief in one class of ghosts. They taught that man had good luck when the ghost was pleased, bad luck when he was an­gered.

• good or bad l. became associated with good or bad spirits

87:4.4Still later the imag­i­na­tion of man en­vi­sioned the con­cept of both good and bad super­nat­u­ral agen­cies; some ghosts never evolved to the level of good spir­its. The early monospiritism of ghost fear was grad­u­ally evolv­ing into a dual spiritism, a new con­cept of the in­vis­i­ble con­trol of earthly af­fairs. At last good luck and bad luck were pic­tured as hav­ing their re­spec­tive con­trol­lers. And of the two classes, the group that brought bad luck were be­lieved to be the more ac­tive and nu­mer­ous.

• attempts to buy off bad l. by bribery

87:6.2In the early days of the cult, man’s ef­forts to in­flu­ence ghost ac­tion were con­fined to pro­pi­ti­a­tion, at­tempts by bribery to buy off ill luck. As the evo­lu­tion of the ghost cult pro­gressed to the con­cept of good as well as bad spir­its, these cer­e­monies turned to­ward at­tempts of a more pos­i­tive na­ture, ef­forts to win good luck. Man’s re­li­gion no longer was com­pletely neg­a­tivis­tic, nor did he stop with the ef­fort to win good luck; he shortly be­gan to de­vise schemes whereby he could com­pel spirit co-op­er­a­tion. No longer does the re­li­gion­ist stand de­fense­less be­fore the un­ceas­ing de­mands of the spirit phan­tasms of his own de­vis­ing; the sav­age is be­gin­ning to in­vent weapons where­with he may co­erce spirit ac­tion and com­pel spirit as­sis­tance.

• intelligent human beings still believe in

88:6.7Grad­u­ally sci­ence is re­mov­ing the gam­bling el­e­ment from life. But if mod­ern meth­ods of ed­u­ca­tion should fail, there would be an al­most im­me­di­ate re­ver­sion to the prim­i­tive be­liefs in magic. These su­per­sti­tions still linger in the minds of many so-called civ­i­lized peo­ple. Lan­guage con­tains many fos­sils which tes­tify that the race has long been steeped in mag­i­cal su­per­sti­tion, such words as spell­bound, ill-starred, pos­ses­sions, in­spi­ra­tion, spirit away, in­ge­nu­ity, en­tranc­ing, thun­der­struck, and as­ton­ished. And in­tel­li­gent hu­man be­ings still be­lieve in good luck, the evil eye, and as­trol­ogy.

• covenants were new device for insuring against bad l.

89:8.6But the idea of mak­ing a covenant with the gods did fi­nally ar­rive. Evo­lu­tion­ary man even­tu­ally ac­quired such moral dig­nity that he dared to bar­gain with his gods. And so the busi­ness of of­fer­ing sac­ri­fices grad­u­ally de­vel­oped into the game of man’s philo­sophic bar­gain­ing with God. And all this rep­re­sented a new de­vice for in­sur­ing against bad luck or, rather, an en­hanced tech­nique for the more def­i­nite pur­chase of pros­per­ity. Do not en­ter­tain the mis­taken idea that these early sac­ri­fices were a free gift to the gods, a spon­ta­neous of­fer­ing of grat­i­tude or thanks­giv­ing; they were not ex­pres­sions of true wor­ship.

• entered into all affairs of primitive life

91:0.2The ear­li­est prayer forms were not ad­dressed to De­ity. These ex­pres­sions were much like what you would say to a friend as you en­tered upon some im­por­tant un­der­tak­ing, “Wish me luck.” Prim­i­tive man was en­slaved to magic; luck, good and bad, en­tered into all the af­fairs of life. At first, these luck pe­ti­tions were mono­logues—just a kind of think­ing out loud by the magic server. Next, these be­liev­ers in luck would en­list the sup­port of their friends and fam­i­lies, and pres­ently some form of cer­e­mony would be per­formed which in­cluded the whole clan or tribe.

• much called good l. might really be bad

118:10.9Some of the amaz­ingly for­tu­itous con­di­tions oc­ca­sion­ally pre­vail­ing on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds may be due to the grad­u­ally emerg­ing pres­ence of the Su­preme, the fore­tast­ing of his fu­ture uni­verse ac­tiv­i­ties. Most of what a mor­tal would call prov­i­den­tial is not; his judg­ment of such mat­ters is very hand­i­capped by lack of far­sighted vi­sion into the true mean­ings of the cir­cum­stances of life. Much of what a mor­tal would call good luck might re­ally be bad luck; the smile of for­tune that be­stows un­earned leisure and un­de­served wealth may be the great­est of hu­man af­flic­tions; the ap­par­ent cru­elty of a per­verse fate that heaps tribu­la­tion upon some suf­fer­ing mor­tal may in re­al­ity be the tem­per­ing fire that is trans­mut­ing the soft iron of im­ma­ture per­son­al­ity into the tem­pered steel of real char­ac­ter.