And
however unfit you may be for a place, and however discreditable may have
been the means by which you got it, once you have actually held it for
two or three years people come to acquiesce in your holding it. They
accept the fact that you are there, just as we accept the fact that any
other evil exists in this world, without asking why, except on very
special occasions. I believe, too, that, in the matter of worldly
preferment, there is too much fatalism in many good men. They have a
vague trust that Providence will do more than it has promised. They are
ready to think, that, if it is God's will that they are to gain such a
prize, it will be sure to come their way without their pushing. That is
a mistake. Suppose you apply the same reasoning to your dinner. Suppose
you sit still in your study and say, "If I am to have dinner to-day, it
will come without effort of mine; and if I am not to have dinner to-day,
it will not come by any effort of mine; so here I sit still and do
nothing." Is not _that_ absurd? Yet that is what many a wise and good
man practically says about the place in life which would suit him, and
which would make him happy. Not Turks and Hindoos alone have a tendency
to believe in their _Kismet_.
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