What are the chances? What are the choices?
The more a man's reflective power is capable of comprehending a regular chain of causes and effects the more fully is the human quality developed in him. Some men are capable of following up two or three links in a chain of causes and effects but no more; yet others can push on to the fifth or sixth, and in these last the distinctive human quality us more developed than in others. [...] a grasp of the relations of cause and effect arises from a natural disposition. --- Ibn Khaldun, Prolegomena, Vol II p.367, Perception and Reflection