The Dreyfus Affair

"'Sometimes, however, individuals have a significance far beyond their ostensible worth...as an illustration of the general principle, take, oh, Alfred Dreyfus. He was a competent and conscientious officer, an asset to France. But it was because of what happened to him that great events came about.'

"Everard scowled. 'Do you mean he was...an instrument of destiny?'

"'You know very well there is no such thing as destiny. There is the structure of the plenum, which we strive to preserve.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), pp. 260-261.

Of Dreyfus, I had known only that he was falsely accused, then exonerated. The Wiki article presents a lengthy account, including the involvement of Zola who, I gather, followed Balzac as Anderson and others later followed Heinlein.

Is there no such thing as destiny? Although history seems to be a series of accidents, individuals sometimes discern patterns in their lives. A friend found that, when he strove to build his business and gained new customers, old customers fell away whereas, when he relaxed and let the business tick over, he kept existing customers. He concluded that he was not meant to become rich in this life. My life has reached a happy ending, a comfortable retirement, due to at least four lucky accidents and despite my own best efforts at sabotage. But everyone's life does not work out right so it is impossible to generalize.