The real diagnosis of these cases is a very different one from that put forward by the mystic apostles of the Golden Luck.  Eminent men who are closely in touch with the great affairs of politics or business often act on what appears to be a mere instinct of this kind.  But, in truth, they have absorbed, through a careful and continuous study of events both in the present and the past, so much knowledge, that their minds reach a conclusion automatically, just as the heart beats without any stimulus from the brain.  Ask them for the reasons of their decision, and they become inarticulate or unintelligible in their replies.  Their conscious mind cannot explain the long-hoarded experience of their subconscious self.  When they prove right in their forecast, the world exclaims, “What luck!” Well, if luck of that kind is long enough continued it will be best ascribed to judgment.

The real “lucky” speculator is of a very different character.  He makes a brilliant coup or so and then disappears in some overwhelming disaster.  He is as quick in losing his fortune as he is in making it.  Nothing except Judgment and Industry, backed by Health, will ensure real and permanent success.  The rest is sheer superstition.

Two pictures may be put before the believer in luck as an element in success.  The one is Monte Carlo—­where the Goddess Fortune is chiefly worshipped—­steeped in almost perpetual sunshine, piled in castellated masses against its hills, gaining the sense of the illimitable from the blue horizon of the Mediterranean—­a shining land meant for clean exercise and repose.  Yet there youth is only seen in its depravity, while old age flocks to the central gambling hell to excite or mortify its jaded appetites by playing a game it is bound to lose.

Here you may see in their decay the people who believe in luck, steeped in an atmosphere of smoke and excitement, while beauty of Nature or the pursuits of health call to them in vain.  Three badly lighted tennis courts compete with thirty splendidly furnished casino rooms.  But of means for obtaining the results of exercise without the exertion there is no end.  The Salle des Bains offers to the fat and the jaded the hot bath, the electric massage, and all the mechanical instruments for restoring energy.  Modern science and art combine to outdo the attractions of the baths of Imperial Rome.

In far different surroundings from these were born the careers of the living captains of modern industry and finance—­Inchcape, Pirrie, Cowdray, Leverhulme, or McKenna.  These men believed in industry, not in fortune, and in judgment rather than in chance.  The youth of this generation will do well to be guided by their example, and follow their road to success.  Not by the worship of the Goddess of Luck were the great fortunes established or the great reputations made.

It is natural and right for youth to hope, but if hope turns to a belief in luck, it becomes a poison to the mind.  The youth of England has before it a splendid opportunity, but let it remember always that nothing but work and brains counts, and that a man can even work himself into brains.  No goddess will open to any man the portals of the temple of success.  Young men must advance boldly to the central shrine along the arduous but well-tried avenues of Judgment and Industry.