Timothy McDermott’s piece in New Blackfriars, March 1991, raised a number of fascinating themes. In this article, inspired by his, I would like to bring together two areas of thought not usually connected: the study of chance and coincidence and the study of the function of the human mind in the construction of its own perceptions. The link between the two will be a consideration of the metaphysical status of literature.

McDermott quotes Jacques Monod on coincidence: ‘The convergence of two totally-independent causal chains of events, the convergence itself being causeless.’ There is nothing unusual about either chain considered in itself. It is in the bringing together of the two chains that the coincidence lies. A coincidence only springs into existence when perceived by an appropriate, a ‘skilled’ observer. For example Leicester’s Moslems were recently excited by the discovery of the word ‘Allah’, in Arabic script, formed by the seeds on the inside of an aubergine. Many were the speculations about what this article portended. Had that aubergine instead been opened in the Leicester of 1931, few would have realised that they were in the presence of wonders.