ABSTRACT
Then there are men who attribute their failure to bad luck; at a time when they should have had public attention, it was diverted from them by a presidential contest, or the outbreak of war, or some other circumstance for which they were not responsible. The view that luck is against one is a very dangerous one, which quickly leads to insane delusions. Luck becomes personified, and supernatural powers are thought to be hostile. This view has the advantage of being very consoling to self-esteem: supernatural powers do not bother with ordinary mortals, and those whom they visit with their enmity are singled out from the mass in virtue of some exceptional quality. Politicians who fail almost invariably attribute their failure to misrepresentation. On some occasion when they were actuated solely by a desire for the public good (in their own opinion such occasions have been frequent), some minor circumstance of which they were in ignorance was seized upon by their enemies to make out that their motives were corrupt or
cowardly. I met once in America a man who had been an eminent socialist leader; he had separated himself from his comrades at the time of the war and had come to be regarded by them as a traitor to the cause. He told me how all those with whom he had worked in old days had now become presidents of republics, or prime ministers at least, while he, owing to the noble public spirit which had led him to take the popular side in the war, was now forgotten and obscure.
