ABSTRACT
The mistake is to assume that this chance conversation provided the cause for his decision, rather than it being a trigger for an underlying, but yet unrecognized, need. Suppose this conversation has never taken place. Would we then assume that Auden would never have become a poet? Suppose Medley had addressed the same question to half-a-dozen other boys in the school. Would we assume that all of them would have chosen to write poetry and have succeeded as well as Auden? All that a serendipitous event can do is to precipitate a decision which would probably have been made sooner or later in any event. Identity acquisition is too fundamental to be simply the product of chance.
