I like how Plato puts it at Laws 4.709b where he speaks of god, luck, opportunity, and skill. "but human affairs are nearly all matters of pure chance. But the

I like how Plato puts it at Laws 4.709b where he speaks of god, luck, opportunity, and skill. "but human affairs are nearly all matters of pure chance. But the fact is that, although one may appear to be quite right in saying this about sea-faring and the arts of the pilot, the physician, and the general, yet there really is something else that we may say with equal truth about these same things. Clinias: What is that? Athenian: That God controls all that is, and that Chance and Occasion co-operate with God in the control of all human affairs. It is, however, less harsh to admit that these two must be accompanied by a third factor, which is Art. For that the pilots' art should cooperate with Occasion—verily I, for one, should esteem that a great advantage. Is it not so?" Plato's remark at Euthydemus 280a is also relevant: "And your reason, I said, is this, that you would fare with better fortune in the hands of a wise one than of an ignorant one? He assented. So that wisdom everywhere causes men to be fortunate: since I presume she could never err, but must needs be right in act and result; otherwise she could be no longer wisdom. We came to an agreement somehow or other"