Items related to Ethical addresses Volume 9
Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1902 Excerpt: ... THE GOOD SIDE TO ADVERSITY. BY WALTER L. SHELDON. Adversity may be wholesome. But people do not like it. The number of people who go out of their way in order to get a little more in their lives of the element of adversity, is not overwhelmingly large. The preponderance in numbers would certainly be in favor of those who try to escape it or dodge it, rather than in favor of those who give it a welcome. It is of the "wheel of fortune" that I am speaking, touching on the element of chance in human life. It turns now one way and now another. We all get some good fortune and some bad fortune; but the proportion is never quite the same in any two lives; and what is equally sure is, that if the amount of the two kinds of fortune could be placed in the scales and weighed out as it came to any one person, the scales would never exactly balance. So far as my own observation goes, in talking with men and women here and there as I meet them, the vast majority of them feel that the balance has been on the side of bad fortune. Supply and demand do not balance well as regards the wants of man for the good things of life. The degree to which the element of chance plays a role in the affairs of each individual person is undoubtedly exaggerated. It is in accordance with the very instincts of human nature to throw the blame on chance for every kind of adversity. The greatest success usually comes to the class of men who are the least given to this habit, and in their experiences are the least inclined to blame chance for their own mistakes. But the element of chance is there,--a good and an evil fortune. Some of that evil fortune we cannot dodge; and some of that good fortune we cannot get, no matter how hard we try for it. And what good can there be in adversity? one may as...
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
