Man Is the Sole Author of His Fortune and Future

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Samuel Taylor Coleridge · Secret Doctrine's Second Proposition Series · 16 pages

Sixteen pages opened by an abstract and train of thoughts, drawing on Coleridge as well as Blavatsky.

The file begins with a proverb and takes it apart. Fortune is said to favour fools — but only, it argues, in the judgement of those who, however prudent in their own opinion, are deficient in valour and enterprise, since courage increases the chances of success by creating opportunities and then using them. A second case is put to the same end: a good and wise man proposes certain objects to himself and attains them by adapting the right means to the right end, but because those objects are not what the world calls fortune, neither money nor rank, his admitted inferiors in moral and intellectual worth are said to be fortune's favourites while he is slighted. The middle of the file supplies the image that makes the argument concrete. The moon waxes and wanes by law and so do the clouds, but the laws governing the moon are known and calculable while those governing the clouds are hidden from us — so that a man walking under a black sky, aware of no danger, may find a gust of wind rending the cloud for a moment and the emerging moon showing him a precipice at the very brink of which he had advanced his foot. That he calls lucky and providential; the file's point is that it was neither. From this comes the doctrine proper: that karma is the vessel of our person and character, and that belief in it instils personal responsibility — every condition being a fruit from the past and a seed for the future. The closing pages face the strongest objection head on, the visible inequality of birth and fortune, of intellect and capacity, and the honour paid to fools and profligates on whom fortune has heaped favours by mere privilege of birth.

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