Her
blindness is the merest fable; she can espy her favourites long before
they are born. We are as days and have had our parents for our
yesterdays, but through all the fair weather of a clear parental sky
the eye of Fortune can discern the coming storm, and she laughs as she
places her favourites it may be in a London alley or those whom she is
resolved to ruin in kings' palaces. Seldom does she relent towards
those whom she has suckled unkindly and seldom does she completely
fail a favoured nursling.
Was George Pontifex one of Fortune's favoured nurslings or not? On
the whole I should say that he was not, for he did not consider
himself so; he was too religious to consider Fortune a deity at all;
he took whatever she gave and never thanked her, being firmly
convinced that whatever he got to his own advantage was of his own
getting. And so it was, after Fortune had made him able to get it.
"Nos te, nos facimus, Fortuna, deam," exclaimed the poet. "It is
we who make thee, Fortune, a goddess"; and so it is, after Fortune has
made us able to make her. The poet says nothing as to the making of
the "nos." Perhaps some men are independent of antecedents and
surroundings and have an initial force within themselves which is in
no way due to causation; but this is supposed to be a difficult
question and it may be as well to avoid it.
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