LIFE A GAMBLE 
489 
So off we go. 
Risks, we have agreed, are always unavoidable; but we can 
calculate them. The best and wisest man I ever knew, the late 
Oscar Eckenstein , was once offered a job which gave him a 
fifty percent chance of survival. He calmly sat down, worked 
out his "expectation of life," his "expectation of income," 
and the Lord alone knows what other factors. It came out 
that the pay offered was a thousand pounds or so less than he 
might expect normally, so he turned down the offer. Not a 
trace of sentiment of any kind! 
Now let us consider an "A.B. case." John Jeremiah Jenkins 
sees a short cut to his performance of the Great Work. To 
seize this opportunity, 
he must give up a steady job with 
good prospects and as near safety as is possible in the nature 
of things, for a slim chance of a career in the most insecure of 
all the professions. 
He can do it; that is at the mercy of his Will; but he risks 
something very close to the utter wreck and ruin of his 
future. Only a miracle can bring him through. Just so! But is 
he not neglecting one factor in his problem? Who put this 
romantically insane opportunity 
in his way? The Gods: it 
must be, since he is performing the Great Work. Very well 
then! It is up to Them to watch: "he shall give his angels 
charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways: in their hands 
they shall bear thee up lest thou dash thy foot against a 
stone." 
What's more, he must leave it at that; he must not insult 
Them by constantly looking out for extra safeguards, or 
"hedging." (You remember the Major in The Suicide Club 
when Prince Florizel was picking seconds for a duel? "In all 
my life I never so much as hedged a bet.") You must give 
Them plenty of opportunity 
to show Their approval by 
steering you miraculously through one crisis after another. 
This course of conduct may seem to you a little like the 
"Act of Truth" but this is only superficially the case. The 
latter is . usually an emergency measure, and either not