We are so involved in the current of life, so immersed in its vital cultural tides, the passage of events, their impact on our feelings and thinking, our own inner tendencies and aims, hopes and fears, are so absorbed in these at every instant, that they succeed each other without our clearly distinguishing them. In the flux of our metamorphoses, they succeed each other spontaneously. Even dramatic happenings that seem to us to decide the course of things become doubtful in their significance upon closer examination. Our view of definitive outcomes also varies in our evolution, being dependent on what we bring to their appreciation. Was the Battle of Borodino necessarily “the beginning of the end” for Napoleon, as Talleyrand so famously said at the time? In World War II