Right here on earth how could any of us deny that we are hemmed in by mystery, in our homes, in the street,--everywhere when we came to think of it?
It was really the part of shallowness to ignore those extrahuman relations and account for the unforeseen by attributing to fate the more than inexplicable.

Did not a chance encounter often decide the entire life of a man?
What was love, what the other incomprehensible shaping influences?
And, knottiest enigma of all, what was money?
There one found oneself confronted by primordial organic law, atrocious edicts promulgated at the very beginning of the world and applied ever since.
The rules were precise and invariable.

Money attracted money, accumulating always in the same places, going by preference to the scoundrelly and the mediocre.

When, by an inscrutable exception, it heaped up in the coffers of a rich man who was not a miser nor a murderer, it stood idle, incapable of resolving itself into a force for good, however charitable the hands which fain would administer it.

One would say it was angry at having got into the wrong box and avenged itself by going into voluntary paralysis when possessed by one who was neither a sharper nor an ass.
It acted still more strangely when by some extraordinary chance it strayed into the home of a poor man.