But the master of
the ball maintained that they had no reason to complain, since he
would undertake that any particular point of the ball should come
up in two and twenty throws; of this he would offer to lay a
wager, and actually laid it when required. The seeming
contradiction between the odds of one and thirty to one, and
twenty-two throws for any chance to come up, so perplexed the
adventurers that they began to think the advantage was on their
side, and so they went on playing and continued to lose.
The doctrine of chances tends to explode the long-standing
superstition that there is in play such a thing as LUCK, good or
bad. If by saying that a man has good luck, nothing more were
meant than that he has been generally a gainer at play, the
expression might be allowed as very proper in a short way of
speaking; but if the word 'good luck' be understood to signify a
certain predominant quality, so inherent in a man that he must
win whenever he plays, or at least win oftener than lose, it may
be denied that there is any such thing in nature. The asserters
of luck maintain that sometimes they have been very lucky, and at
other times they have had a prodigious run of bad luck against
them, which whilst it continued obliged them to be very cautious
in engaging with the fortunate.
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