Michel de Montaigne had similarly stressed the importance of contingent factors in determining the outcome of lives. He advised us to remember the role played by “chance in bestowing glory on us according to her fickle will: I have often seen chance marching ahead of merit, and often outstripping merit by a long chalk.” A dispassionate audit of our successes and failures should leave us feeling that there are reasons to be at once less proud of and less embarrassed about ourselves, for a thought-provoking percentage of what happens to us is not of our own doing.
