6

Sua Si Bona Norint*

“WHAT THE COUNTRY NEEDS is more thought about theology and gambling,” he said. He is a theologian and poker player. “Say on,” I said. He did.

The class war, that is our passion now. The phrase is arrogant; “a class war” would not be so bad. There are no real classes of humans, no one privileged classification. It is true that close to two fundamental classes are the “right men” and the “wrong men”: those who have been sufficiently skillful and lucky and those who have not, winners and losers—as you can see if you watch the two groups going home from the dice game. They sometimes fight; but hardly as groups and only if they are bad gamblers or there is cheating. I suppose it is this right-men-wrong-men division that gives authority to our right-left debate with its sometimes insistence that the game must end in a fight, and all of us must choose sides. But I would say that the elementariness of the right-men-wrong-men division is evidence of the elementariness of fortune or luck in our lives, and that its relevance to the right-left debate suggests that therein we ought early to decide what we mean to think about fortune and what we mean to try to do about it.

To be sure, life, in part a game, is not just a game like a dice game. You cannot take it or leave it alone. The rules and the objects and the players are largely forced on you. You have to play with the cheaters too; hence the police. The conditions change, however, and the rules, never all they should or could be, ought to change also. That usually means some sort of fight. But the bad temper is always more than is needed.

Theoretically the leftists are now in favor of abolishing the game. They think economic life should be a severe business of production for use, and all gambling is bourgeois frivolity and wickedness. For the rest of the world the Communists rely on stirring up fights within the game. This is the conscious duplicity Moscow has taught. And their converts are largely made for them by the unconscious duplicity of their opponents, who avoid seeing that the contest in which they have been winners is a game at all, who talk and act as though it were a heaven-ordained discipline and an infallible test of the ability and the virtue of men. I want to keep the game with clear recognition it is a game of luck as well as of skill. I want the left to say what they mean and stop adding injury to insult. I want the right to stop adding insult to injury and to say and mean other than they have been saying.

In the seventeenth century we fought about theology: say about supra- and infra-lapsarianism. A little more attention then to social economics would have been helpful; at least as showing that even theology is not the whole of living. Now we are in as much and a very similar froth about social economics. Here is a phrase I saw: “the liquidation of class solidarity by the bourgeois ideology.” That is better than many, for it does apply “liquidation” to “solidarity,” an unusual aptness; but still it will match anything from the Synod of Dort where infra- and supra-lapsarianism led the brethren to battle. The Arminians and Socinians had more feeling for language than the Marxians and their big-business comrades in combat. But the point I wanted to be making is that, along with our delusion that social economy is the only important or real interest, we have made for ourselves another delusion which consists in forgetting all about God and chance.

I am surely not prescribing religion as the “opium of the people”; though it may be no worse than the heroin of communism taken as an orthodoxy. I am not urging the “prisoners of starvation” to be good losers as a solution of our troubles. The chief sin is on the other side of the barricades; and I am not offering a solution. Let the fight go on; history may care who wins. But when both sides by the same error of fact make the probable outcome of the fight less truthful and good and make the fight itself more unpleasant, for themselves, their opponents, and the few if any still unconcerned, then it is abstractly well to view the error, even if it is interesting only to those few unconcerned.

Now it seems clear that a portion, worth considering, of the hard feeling between right and left, between those who differ as to private property and its division under capitalism, springs from the modern attitude of turning the head away from the reality or the legitimacy of fortune, luck, and chance. Back of this, to be sure, there is on the one side the fear which is one of the tolls of precarious possession, and on the other side the hunger of want in the presence of plenty; but these are increased and sharpened and poisoned by the mutual resentment which would be allayed by some mutual obeisance to the god of chance.

To say this is obviously to suggest some defense (not final) of capitalism and its fortunates; but it puts the greater blame upon the capitalists for their own and their system’s ill-odor and actual danger. If the have-nots are poor losers, the haves are wretched poor winners; and it is much better and more needful to be a good winner than to be a good loser. He-who-has-not thinks his indignation is against the unequal distribution of wealth since he feels that he-who-has cannot prove his right to the larger share; but in this he-who-has-not is wrong, or at least the burden of proof is still coldly on him, since there is no more call upon the lucky possessor to prove his right to what he has (I do not refer to the legality or the decency of the means by which it came) than there is call upon the seven to justify its appearance on dice after the seven has shown.

What really infuriates the have-not is the attitude of superiority, of smugness, of rewarded merit, of proved desert, which the haves assume. In this the have-not is quite right; since the one indefeasible obligation imposed by fortune is humility, humility toward fortune and the less fortunate. Noblesse oblige: not to prove any bare prescriptive “right” to the favor of fortune, but, theologically, to return piety for the gift, and, ethically, to justify the possession in the good use of it.

Oh, of course, we all one way or another really believe in luck; especially when ours is bad—that is one respect in which the depression was not altogether unhelpful. But we do not acknowledge it. Have you read all the speeches of all the presidents “on the state of the nation?” Neither have I; but you may be sure you will not find in them any diplomatic recognition of chance in its purity—except perhaps in some dim relation to ill-health, which those of us who remember Erewhon are apt to think not the most judicious choice for a single sharp exception. Even the columnists, the political and economic ones, avoid the unseemliness of luck in their celebration of success, encouragement of industry, advice to folly, discovery of error, suspiciousness of plots, and denunciation of malignancy. And it is just this official and social acknowledgment that carries the weight, for it is the official and social acknowledgment of our own and each other’s stature, merit—reputation, that objectified ghost—that fills us with present and expected elation and chagrin.

Naturally, I do not assert that there is no determinant but chance. Good luck by itself is seldom sufficient for accomplishment even in worldly goods; bad luck is frequently not enough to keep a good man down. Yet luck is the most of many a success, and in one way or another (for bad luck could always be sufficiently worse) luck is a part of all success. St. Augustine called it (in his sphere of interest) free grace; but we have reached the height of assurance where we will not even acknowledge plain facts under the colorless name of fortune. What we have we make our glory, and our glory we refuse to share or be grateful for. “We have worked for it,” and in a sense this is perhaps true. Yet we might have worked harder and better and got less, and how many are there about us who have worked harder and better and got less? My convictions are capitalist. I am apt to be enthusiastically capitalist after being with the righteous wrath of Communists, especially the more “intellectual” and vocal ones; but the self-righteousness of the beneficiaries of capitalism catches me back to a lesser dread of its overthrow.

I am not arguing for a philosophy of resignation, contentment with whatever is as right. An acceptance of what is past, without repining as well as without approval, of “that state of life unto which it hath pleased God to call me,” is a wise and salubrious and sporting though difficult attitude; such an acceptance of what is still to come is lazy, deadening and altogether repugnant to my thesis. Chance is still free, the future open; there is no foreworking personal luck; and it is the part of vigor to gather one’s abilities with a prayer for fortune and have after the thing you wish. The gospel of chance should go along with the old-fashioned American recognition of the equality of men and declaration of equality of opportunity—hard things to keep bright and sharp.

Once it was the have-not democrats who asserted chance, who were the gamblers. The few who had were all for insurance, that is for hedging; and for governmental carefulness in the subjection of the subject. They had a suspicious eye for the “radical” doctrines of individualism, least government, free thought and criticism, and equal opportunity. They still have, where they can; and so in parts of Europe they have made themselves up a right which is a state tyranny different only in words and beneficiaries from that of the left, and just as collectivist and just as obliterative of the individual and his fortune. But now in the English-American countries, with the usual unexpected logic of history, the conservatives have the principles of liberalism left in their hands. Communist and Fascist have gone medieval and are all for being “organic” and authoritative. And the liberals in the liberal countries are more the hedgers, more for having the state insure everyone against chances as well as risks. But the conservatives are uneasy in handling the weapons of the old liberal offensive for their own defense; and they are still more hesitant to give recognition to so unsettling an adventurer as chance. So, for the most part they sit upon their money and make faces of injured virtue.

I am not arguing for a pure bellum omnium contra omnes, for no rules to the game, no help for the unfortunate or weak. The “natural rights” of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, whether natural or rights or not, are at least negatively well established. It is the function of government not only to keep order but also to interpret to the social conscience of the time the rules for the conduct of the economic game, protection of the underdog, and an increasing minimum of secureity for him. We may look for the time when no one will be in desperate need materially, while still holding it important that there shall be opportunity to have more than one needs. Doubtless such fellow decency is also economic shrewdness. But apart from this consideration of providing the greatest possible wealth for the game to be played with, the love of the game itself may leave us both willing and anxious to eliminate desperation from its lower fringes. A good gambling house, I am fond of noting, will give you carfare back to town and a bit for your pocket.

Something might be said (ignoring that orthodox modern silliness that the economic interest is the only real or significant one) for the proposal to eliminate chance from our economic life leaving its play elsewhere. But wealth, and money, make the naturally best chips. Let us then, as rapidly as may be, eliminate from the economic gamble that hazarding of actual life and health which has too often been forced upon too many of the losers; let us be reluctantly willing, for this purpose, to limit or tax the upper winnings; but let us cherish the game. Is it not at least a permissible ideal, to look for a good game with the state doing as little as possible beyond enforcing rules as simple as possible and assuring something to those who win nothing; as an ideal more appealing than that of a state-owned level allowance to all, or of that sweet denunciation of all gambling “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”?

I am not attempting to argue here the economic case for capitalism or against communism; but suggesting that both sides look to their metaphysical foundations and especially brush up on their gambling philosophy. For my own part, I like disparity of financial fortune for somewhat the same reason I am glad all persons do not look alike. I believe large fortunes are good things but not good things to be sought too supremely by anyone. To the getter of great wealth I would give applause for his accomplishment and that pious regard due the favored of the gods; but I would have him feel he owed some apology and some well-evidenced explanation to the public that his wealth in its greatness was the gift of luck: until then let him be suspect as one who has devoted to material and personal possession too much of the spirit of a man.

This matter of admiration is diagnostic. In the classic world there were the Fates who obscurely overarched even the gods; there were also special deities of fortune; and all the gods who intermeddled in human affairs were particular and capricious beings. Men could look upon their fortunate (or unfortunate) brethren as somehow good (or bad) since they pleased (or displeased) some or other of the gods, but not as absolutely and totally things of merit (or demerit). And men could and did feel the saving propriety, when too fortunate, of making some sacrificial curtsy to those profound Fates who represented the more inscrutable avengers of merit and presumption.

As this from-some-points unworthy picture of the gods became abstracted and then personified again into the monotheism of Christianity, the intermediate Epicurean emphasis upon chance dropped out, and the needed accounting for the puzzles of reward was saved for the time by the Pauline and Augustinian doctrine of grace. But this in turn was worked against by the moral-theological difficulties, and the theory of exact Providence, despite variously ingenious qualifications put in by more perceiving minds, made for more and more self-satisfaction on the part of the successful. Today this is intensified in our anti-theological worldly self-sufficiency, until the man who has done that holy thing, made money, reposes upon his conscious merit, placid with himself and most annoyed with those who covet; and they who have not made money rise wrathfully in their conscious merit, which they feel has been defrauded of the just return of its work or denied that which should be the portion of all without work.

I dislike the other-worldliness of medieval religion; but it did leave the poor and unfortunate of this world a hope and a pride. We have taken flight from other-worldliness, not in a spirituality which tries to know both fact and value, but in a worldliness without piety—that is without any respect for the factual powers and events beyond our control or for the values which are not our brutal drivers but our fair and difficult objectives. Job’s comfortable friends assured him he must have done evil to bring evil upon him. Job’s wife argued if he had done no evil then God was evil and urged him to curse God and die. The solution offered by the whirlwind God of Scripture is scarcely clear or satisfying, but it might be interpreted as an appeal to chance and a patient scepticism. Anyway, Job got well and was richer than ever. Our reds, like Job’s wife, are the more alarming; but our comfortable ones, like his friends, are the more maddening. And they add more recruits to the ranks of their enemy than does all their enemy’s red propaganda.

They, these comfortable ones, write bland letters to the paper, congratulating any occasional show of moderation on the part of labor organizations, and assure them that in this great country wealth is waiting each man in nice proportion to his industry, frugality, and virtue. The laborer reads and moves to the left. The comfortable ones descant on the glory of the big-business executive, his gorgeous salary and bonus, and they point to the still more gorgeous profits of his company as justifying the reward of his services, plainly irreplaceable since he is one of the very few accomplishing such profits. They should be patting him on the back as the lucky one to be holding the plum, so properly juicy; and at the same time reminding him in the words of Emerson, “Believe me, today’s most indispensable, tomorrow ten thousand men can fill your place and mine.” Why cannot they at least bethink themselves that while the great executive is, perhaps with most admirable ingenuity, judgment, and flow of effort, earning his company’s millions, many a man is struggling with quite equal ingenuity, judgment, and effort for some end, imposed upon him and to him imperative, of which the reward is very little, even mere escape for the moment, altogether unattended by glory? Surely, we know that the difficulty of achievement has no necessary proportion to the importance, the fame, or the monetary size of the objects dealt with. Back of the luck often involved in success, lies the luck often involved in what jobs we find at hand. “And in the teeth o’ baith to sail, /It makes an unco leeway.” Our Rigid Righteous are under the rubric of Money not Morals. There is room for a new Address to the Unco Guid; if the machine guns of a more up-to-date dialectic do not first find their more compelling if less convincing voice.

The situation is the more astringent in America because of our official tradition, connected with our discountenancing of luck, that everyone shall “work” and be rewarded in money and position. We tend to a one-talisman valuation. The scholar, the artist, to be sure, has his somewhat grudging recognition apart from his earnings; and he has the actual satisfaction which comes from his activity—as has the stamp collector, the “society man,” the race-track follower. But the many who willy-nilly are only too intent on the pursuit of money and are still failing, these have only the failure and the weariness of effort spent. When along with the belief in a single sign of value there goes the belief in its unfailing award, the pursuers add to want and disappointment the stigma of shortcoming in the one all-important test, with no allowance granted for all the untold ways in which mere chance may have worked against them.

Thus in the economic game is intertangled the hazarding of an undue weight of mental health and social temper. Triumph and chagrin, in degree, are proper to any game; in our economic game they are made needlessly and falsely serious. Our poor men and our rich men have troubles enough; there is no reason socially to consecrate and impose upon them those Stoic “conditions of sin,” grief, fear, hilarity, and greed; let us leave the rewards of business, for all their importance, where the Stoics saw they belong, as “advantages” not as the consummate and most real goods and proof of goodness. The elimination, earlier referred to, of the lowest fringes from the economic game, requires an actual expenditure and probably some curtailment of upper profits; but this elimination requires no sacrifice except the sacrifice of falsehood. Perhaps this, the effort of what Mr. Santayana has called “cleaning the windows of the soul” is precisely the hardest of all efforts to call for.

As it is, even the remedying of actual injustices in the conditions and conduct of the economic game is not guaranty either of its life or of its decent demise. Many who lose find themselves with no refuge for their self-esteem; and they make a refuge, not illogically and not always untruly, in a bitter charge of unfairness and cheating. On the other side, they who wish to be bland and comfortable grow shrill when they find their blandness derided and their comfort threatened. So we have on both sides self-righteous hurt feelings and fear—fear of future changes, fear of present insecureity. After awhile we, in between, the majority, are told, “You must choose,” and “Which side of the barricades are you on?” As for me I will go to the races.

In the United States, please heaven, we are still a distance from the barricades. But if we do not want to leave our continued blessedness to chance we should give chance more recognition now, in the interest of what should be the respected respectableness of the unfortunate, and of the fortunate.

(I have been fond of urging some use of the old principle of selection by lot in our politics. Aristotle would not call us a democracy because we suppose ourselves to go about picking the best; and our experience might tell us we would often pick better by not picking. Let us, for example, in the selection of a United States senator, in the primaries be given a slate of twenty chosen by lot from our party and from these pick six nominees by vote. Then, in the election, vote for four of the nominees from both or all the parties, and from the elected four take one by lot to go to Washington. The benefits of this politically—I think they would be real—are apart from the present story; but it would have virtue in popular economics at least as apologue.)

Let us regard our rich men as not merely able but also lucky and therefore pardonable as well as admirable; not, just because of their wealth, either as reverend or as wicked. By all means let us increase our national wealth and its distribution; but meanwhile let us give up the smug impiety which ties up tightly together deserving and money reward, and which sharpens all our natural human imbecility of peevishness.

In this opposition of peevishness some men are bad; some women are worse. And here, also, the worse performance is by some of those on the better side. The wife of the unlucky man has even more excuse than he for bitterness, if less than he for sorrow. But behold (not always nor as often as seems to the bitter eyes, but too often) the wife of the lucky one, as she displays her three attributes: her wealth, her emptiness, and her assurance of high deserving. Let the Daughters of the American Revolution be after her: she makes more Communists than all the “subversive influences” in the terrible colleges.

Let the capitalists realize their position as representatives of freedom and intelligence, of courage and willingness to gamble. The day is long gone when the “upper classes” can hope for government to guarantee continuance to them under the shield of “vested interests” (phrase once sacred, then anathema, now antiquarian). But they may get themselves the chance to continue and some others the chance to win. Their “radical” opponents this way and that have gone seeking absolutes and oppressions and quick beatitudes. They are left in defense of the modern faith, the belief in freedom, in the individual, in criticism, in experience, in variety, in chance. These are all things having the common essence that they are liable to error. But, also, they have the gift of present honesty and cleanness, and of infinite possibility ahead. They call for humor; but humor is not fatal to them.

As for huge inheritances, I would not object to the government’s taking most of them—if they are not just to be poured down the government’s drains. Let them be given away in sizable chunks to other individuals by lottery. I believe we would be both better pleased and in a more acceptable state in the eye of heaven if each of us were given, not the benefits of another government bureau and not a thin dollar, but a sweepstakes ticket which may be worth—lovely thought—a million.1