On Fate
On Fate Hellenistic Cicero, Marcus Tullius Latin. . . because it pertains to character, which they call ēthos, we are accustomed to call that part of philosophy the study of morals; but in enriching the Latin tongue it is fitting to name it ‘moral.’ The force and theory of propositions, too, must be explained—what the Greeks call axiōmata—for when they assert something about a future event, and about what can or cannot happen, what force such statements have is an obscure question, the one the philosophers call peri dynatōn (‘on possibles’); and the whole of it belongs to logikē, which I call the theory of reasoning. But what I did in my other books, those on the nature of the gods, and likewise in those I published on divination—namely, that the argument should be developed continuously on both sides, so that each man might the more readily accept whatever seemed to him most probable—a certain accident prevented me from doing in this discussion on fate.
For when I was at my estate near Puteoli, and our friend Hirtius, the consul-elect, was in the same region—a man most devoted to me and to those studies in which we have lived from our boyhood—we were much together, chiefly inquiring into those measures which might bear upon peace and upon the concord of the citizens. For since, after the death of Caesar, every occasion for fresh disturbances seemed to be sought out, and we thought these had to be met, almost all our conversation was spent on these deliberations; and one day in particular, more freely than was usual, and more free of interrupting callers, when he had come to me, our talk turned first to those matters that were our daily and, as it were, lawful concern—of peace and of repose.
These matters dealt with, ‘What then?’ said he. ‘Since you have not, I hope, abandoned your rhetorical exercises, but have certainly set philosophy before them, may I hear something?’ ‘You may indeed,’ said I, ‘either hear or speak; for neither—as you rightly judge—have I deserted those oratorical studies, in which I even kindled your own zeal, though I had received you already ablaze; nor do the matters I now treat diminish that faculty, but rather increase it. For the orator has a great kinship with this kind of philosophy which we follow: he borrows subtlety from the Academy and in turn repays it with fullness of expression and the ornaments of speech. And so,’ said I, ‘since the possession of both pursuits is ours, today let the choice be yours, which of the two you would rather enjoy.’ Then Hirtius said: ‘Most welcome, and like all that is yours; for your kindness has never refused anything to my zeal.’
‘But since your rhetorical works are known to me, and I have often heard you in them and shall hear you again, and since your Tusculan Disputations show that you have taken up this practice of the Academics of arguing against a proposition, I should like, if it is no trouble to you, to lay down some thesis for me to listen to.’ ‘Can anything,’ said I, ‘be a trouble to me which will be welcome to you? But you will hear me as a Roman, as one entering timidly upon this kind of disputation, as one taking up these studies again after a long interval.’ ‘So,’ said he, ‘I shall listen to you arguing just as I read what you have written. Begin, then. Let us sit down here.’
. . . in some of which—as in the poet Antipater, as in those born on the day of the winter solstice, as in brothers who fall ill at the same time, as in the case of the urine, as of the fingernails, and the rest of that kind—the sympathy of nature prevails, which I do not abolish, yet there is no force of fate; while in others there can be something fortuitous, as in that shipwrecked man, as in Icadius, as in Daphitas. Some things, too, Posidonius (saving my respect for the master) seems to invent; and they are surely absurd. For consider: if it was Daphitas’ fate to fall from a horse and so to perish, was it from this horse, which, though it was no horse, bore the name borrowed from one? Or was Philip warned to shun these little four-horse teams engraved on a sword-hilt? As if, indeed, he were slain by a sword-hilt! And what is so great in the fact that that nameless castaway slipped into a stream? (though here our author writes that it had been foretold to him that he must perish in water). Nor, by Hercules, do I see any fate at all in the case of Icadius the pirate;
for he writes that nothing was foretold to him. What wonder, then, that a rock from the cave fell upon his legs? For I suppose that, even if Icadius had not been in the cave at the time, that rock would nonetheless have fallen. For either nothing whatever is fortuitous, or this very thing could have happened by chance. I ask, therefore (and this will have wide application): if there were no name for fate at all, no nature, no force, and if either most things or all things came about at random, heedlessly, by chance, would they come about otherwise than they now come about? What good is it, then, to keep harping on fate, when without fate the explanation of all things may be referred to nature or to fortune?
But let us dismiss Posidonius, as is fair, with our good grace, and return to the snares of Chrysippus. To him let us first reply concerning this very ‘sympathy’ of things, and pursue the rest afterward. We see how much difference there is among the natures of places: some are healthful, others pestilential; in some the inhabitants are phlegmatic and, as it were, full of rheum, in others dried out and parched; and there are many other things in which place differs greatly from place. At Athens the air is thin, from which the Attic people are thought the keener; at Thebes it is thick, and so the Thebans are dull-witted and robust. Yet that thin air will not bring it about that a man should listen to Zeno, or to Arcesilaus, or to Theophrastus, nor will the thick air make him seek victory at Nemea rather than at the Isthmus. Distinguish the cases more widely.
For what can the nature of a place contribute toward our walking in Pompey’s portico rather than on the Campus? With you rather than with another? On the Ides rather than on the Kalends? As, then, the nature of a place has some bearing upon certain matters, but none upon others, so let the influence of the stars avail, if you will, for certain matters; for all things it certainly will not avail. ‘But indeed,’ he says, ‘since there are differences in the natures of men, so that sweet things please some and rather bitter things others, and some are lustful, others irascible or cruel or proud, while others shrink from such vices—since, then, one nature stands so far apart from another, what wonder is it that these differences have been produced by differing causes?’
In arguing thus he does not see what the question is, or wherein the case consists. For it does not follow, if some men are more inclined to some things on account of natural and antecedent causes, that there are therefore also natural and antecedent causes of our acts of will and of our desires. For nothing would be in our power, if matters stood so. As it is, we admit that whether we be sharp or dull, strong or feeble, is not within us. But the man who thinks it is thereby forced that not even our sitting or walking is a matter of the will does not see what consequence follows upon each thing. For though both the clever and the slow are born so from antecedent causes, and likewise the strong and the weak, it does not therefore follow that their sitting too, and their walking, and their doing of any deed is fixed and determined by principal causes.
We are told that Stilpo, the Megarian philosopher, was a man of real keenness and approved in those times. His own intimates write that he was both given to drink and given to women, and they write this not in reproach but rather to his credit: for they say that a vicious nature was so subdued and repressed in him by training that no one ever saw him drunken, no one saw in him a trace of lust. And what of Socrates? Do we not read how Zopyrus the physiognomist branded him—the man who professed to discern the characters and natures of men from the body, the eyes, the face, the brow? He declared Socrates stupid and thick, because he had no hollows in the collarbone; he said those parts were blocked and stopped up; he added, too, that he was a womanizer—at which Alcibiades is said to have burst out laughing.
But although these vices may arise from natural causes, yet that they should be uprooted and utterly removed, so that the very man who was inclined to them should be turned away from such great vices—this is not lodged in natural causes, but in will, in effort, in discipline. And all this is done away with, if the force and nature of fate shall be established on the strength of the theory of divination. For if there is divination, from what sort of perceptions of the art does it proceed? (I call ‘perceptions’ those things which are called in Greek theōrēmata.) For I do not believe that, without any perception, either other practitioners engage in their office, or those who employ divination foretell the future.
Let the perceptions of the astrologers, then, be of this kind: ‘If anyone, for example, is born at the rising of the Dog-star, he will not die at sea.’ Be on your guard, Chrysippus, lest you abandon your own cause, in which you have a great struggle with Diodorus, a powerful dialectician. For if it is true, when it is connected thus—‘If anyone is born at the rising of the Dog-star, he will not die at sea’—then this too is true: ‘If Fabius was born at the rising of the Dog-star, Fabius will not die at sea.’ These two propositions, then, are in conflict with each other: that Fabius was born at the rising of the Dog-star, and that Fabius will die at sea. And since it is laid down as certain in the case of Fabius that he was born at the rising of the Dog-star, these too are in conflict: both that Fabius exists, and that he will die at sea. Therefore this conjunction also is composed of incompatibles: ‘Both Fabius exists, and Fabius will die at sea’—which, as it has been stated, cannot even come to pass. Therefore this: ‘Fabius will die at sea’ belongs to that class which cannot come to pass. Everything, therefore, that is pronounced false with respect to the future, cannot come to pass.
But this, Chrysippus, is the very last thing you want, and your greatest contest is with Diodorus on this very point. For he says that that alone can come to pass which either is true or will be true; and whatever will be, he says it is necessary that it come to pass; and whatever will not be, he denies that it can come to pass. You, on the other hand, say that even things which will not be can come to pass—such as that this gem should be broken, even though it never will be—and that it was not necessary for Cypselus to reign at Corinth, although that had been declared a thousand years before by the oracle of Apollo. But if you approve those divine predictions, then among the things that shall be pronounced false regarding the future you will hold that they cannot come to pass, and, if a thing is truly said about the future, and it is so going to be, you will say it is necessary—which is the whole opinion of Diodorus, hostile to your school.
For if this is truly connected—‘If you were born at the rising of the Dog-star, you will not die at sea’—and the first member in the connection, ‘You were born at the rising of the Dog-star,’ is necessary (for all true statements about the past are necessary, as it pleases Chrysippus, dissenting from his master Cleanthes, because they are unchangeable and the past cannot turn from true into false): if, then, what is first in the connection is necessary, that which follows also becomes necessary. Yet this does not seem to Chrysippus to hold in all cases; but nevertheless, if there is a natural cause why Fabius should not die at sea, Fabius cannot die at sea.
At this point Chrysippus, in his anxiety, hopes that the Chaldaeans and the other diviners may be mistaken, and that they will not use connected propositions in stating their perceptions thus: ‘If anyone is born at the rising of the Dog-star, he will not die at sea,’ but will rather say it like this: ‘It is not the case both that someone is born at the rising of the Dog-star and that he will die at sea.’ O the laughable license! Lest he himself fall into Diodorus’ trap, he instructs the Chaldaeans how they ought to frame their perceptions. For I ask: if the Chaldaeans are to speak in such a way as to lay down negations of indefinite conjunctions rather than indefinite connected propositions, why should not physicians do the same, why not geometers, why not the rest? The physician, in the first place, will not state what he has perceived in his art thus: ‘If anyone’s pulses move so, he has a fever,’ but rather in that other way: ‘It is not the case both that anyone’s pulses move so and that he does not have a fever.’ And likewise the geometer will not say thus: ‘On a sphere the greatest circles bisect one another,’ but rather in that other way: ‘It is not the case both that there are greatest circles on a sphere and that they do not bisect one another.’
What is there that cannot in that manner be transferred from a connected proposition to the negation of conjunctions? And indeed we can express the same things in still other ways. I have just said: ‘On a sphere the greatest circles bisect one another’; I can say: ‘If there shall be greatest circles on a sphere’; I can say: ‘Because there shall be greatest circles on a sphere.’ There are many kinds of statement, and none more twisted than this, in which Chrysippus hopes the Chaldaeans will be content for the sake of the Stoics.
Yet none of them speaks so; for it is a greater task to learn these contortions of language than the risings and settings of the constellations. But let us return to that contention of Diodorus, which they call peri dynatōn, in which it is inquired what force there is in that which can come to pass. It pleases Diodorus, then, that that alone can come to pass which either is true or will be true. And this point touches upon the present question: that nothing comes to pass which has not been necessary, and that whatever can come to pass either is already or will be; and that things which are future can no more be changed from true into false than things which are past; but that in things past the immutability is apparent, while in certain future things, because it is not apparent, it does not even seem to be present—as in the case of a man pressed by a mortal disease, the statement ‘This man will die of this disease’ is true; yet this same thing, if it be truly said of a man in whom no such violence of disease appears, is none the less going to be. Thus it comes about that no change from true into false can occur even in the future. For ‘Scipio will die’ has such force that, although it is said of the future, yet it cannot be turned into false; for it is said of a man for whom it is necessary to die.
In the same way, if it were said: ‘Scipio will die by night in his bedchamber, overpowered by violence,’ it would be said truly; for that would be said to be about to happen which was going to happen; and that it was going to happen must be understood from the fact that it did happen. Nor was ‘Scipio will die’ any more true than ‘He will die in that manner,’ nor was it any more necessary for Scipio to die than to die in that manner, nor was ‘Scipio has been slain’ any more immutable from true into false than ‘Scipio will be slain’; nor, since these things are so, is there any reason why Epicurus should dread fate and seek refuge from the atoms, and turn them aside from their course, and at one stroke take upon himself two insoluble difficulties: the one, that something should come to pass without a cause—from which it would result that something comes from nothing, which neither he nor any natural philosopher allows; the other, that, when two atoms are carried through the void, the one should move straight on while the other swerves.
For Epicurus, while granting that every proposition is either true or false, may yet not fear that all things must therefore come to pass by fate; for it is not by eternal causes flowing from the necessity of nature that this is true which is stated thus: ‘Carneades went down to the Academy’—and yet it is not without causes; but there is a difference between causes that have gone before fortuitously and causes that contain within themselves a natural efficacy. Thus it was both always true that ‘Epicurus will die when he has lived seventy-two years, in the archonship of Pytharatus,’ and yet there were no causes of fate why it should so happen; but, because it so fell out, it was bound to fall out, just as it did, by a fixed series of causes.
Nor do those who say that future things are immutable, and that what is truly future cannot be turned into false, thereby confirm the necessity of fate; they are interpreting the force of words. But those who introduce an everlasting series of causes—these strip the mind of man of free will and bind it fast in the necessity of fate. But so much for this; let us look at other points. For Chrysippus reasons in this fashion: ‘If there is any motion without a cause, then not every proposition—what the dialecticians call an axiōma—will be either true or false; for that which will not have efficient causes will be neither true nor false; but every proposition is either true or false; therefore there is no motion without a cause. And if this is so, all things that come to pass come to pass by antecedent causes; if this is so, all things come to pass by fate; it follows, therefore, that whatever comes to pass comes to pass by fate.’
Here, in the first place, if it should please me to agree with Epicurus and to deny that every proposition is either true or false, I would sooner take that blow than allow that all things come to pass by fate; for the former opinion admits of some argument, whereas the latter is not to be endured. And so Chrysippus strains every nerve to persuade us that every axiōma is either true or false. For just as Epicurus fears that, if he should grant this, it must be granted that whatever comes to pass comes to pass by fate (for if either one of the two is true from all eternity, it is also certain, and, if certain, also necessary; and so he thinks both necessity and fate are confirmed), so Chrysippus is afraid that, if he should not maintain that everything which is stated is either true or false, he will not hold that all things come to pass by fate and from the eternal causes of future things.
But Epicurus thinks that by the swerve of the atom the necessity of fate is avoided. And so a certain third motion arises, apart from weight and impact, when the atom swerves by the least interval (this he calls elachiston); and that this swerve takes place without a cause he is forced to confess, if not in words, yet in fact. For an atom does not swerve when struck by an atom. For how can one be driven by another, if individual bodies are carried by their weight straight down in a perpendicular line, as it pleases Epicurus? For it follows that, if one is never driven from its course by another, one does not even touch another. From which it results that, even granting that there is an atom and that it swerves, it swerves without a cause.
Epicurus introduced this theory for this reason: because he feared that, if the atom were always carried by its weight in a natural and necessary way, nothing would be free for us, since the mind would be moved in such a manner as to be compelled by the motion of the atoms. Democritus, the author of the atoms, preferred to accept this, that all things come to pass by necessity, rather than to wrench from the individual bodies their natural motions. More acutely did Carneades, who taught that the Epicureans could defend their cause without this fictitious swerve. For since they could show that there can be a certain voluntary motion of the mind, it was better to defend that than to introduce a swerve, of which, in particular, they could find no cause; and once that motion was defended, they could easily resist Chrysippus. For though they had granted that no motion is without a cause, they need not grant that all things which come to pass come to pass by antecedent causes; for our will, they said, has no external and antecedent causes.
We are therefore misusing the common usage of speech when we say that someone wills or refuses something ‘without a cause’; for we say ‘without a cause’ in the sense of ‘without an external and antecedent cause,’ not ‘without any cause at all.’ Just as, when we call a jar empty, we do not speak as the natural philosophers do, to whom there is no such thing as the empty, but rather we say, for example, that the jar is without water, without wine, without oil—so, when we say that the mind is moved without a cause, we mean that it is moved without an antecedent and external cause, not without any cause whatever. Of the atom itself it may be said, when it is moved through the void by its weight and heaviness, that it is moved without a cause, because no cause comes to it from outside.
But again, lest all the natural philosophers should laugh at us for saying that anything comes to pass without a cause, a distinction must be drawn, and it must be put thus: that it is the very nature of the individual body to be moved by its weight and heaviness, and that this very thing is the cause why it is so carried. Similarly, for the voluntary motions of the mind no external cause need be sought; for voluntary motion contains within itself this nature, that it is in our power and obeys us—and that not without a cause; for the cause of that very thing is nature itself.
Since this is so, what reason is there why not every proposition should be either true or false, unless we shall have granted that whatever comes to pass comes to pass by fate? ‘Because,’ he says, ‘future things cannot be true which do not have causes why they should be future; therefore it is necessary that the things which are true should have causes; and so, when they come about, they will have come about by fate.’ The business is finished—if indeed you must grant either that all things come to pass by fate, or that something can come to pass without a cause.
Or can this proposition not be true in any other way—‘Scipio will take Numantia’—unless from all eternity one cause, linking cause to cause, is going to bring it about? Or could this have been false, if it had been said six hundred ages before? And if at that time this proposition were not true—‘Scipio will take Numantia’—then neither, once that is overthrown, is this proposition true: ‘Scipio has taken Numantia.’ Can anything, then, have come to pass which it was not true was going to come to pass? For as we call those things past as true of which the actuality was true at an earlier time, so those things future we shall call true of which the actuality will be true at a later time.
Nor, if every proposition is either true or false, does it forthwith follow that there are immutable causes, and those eternal, which prevent anything from falling out otherwise than as it is going to fall out; the causes are fortuitous which bring it about that those things are truly said which will be said thus: ‘Cato will come into the Senate’—causes not enclosed within the nature of things and the universe; and yet ‘he will come’ is as immutable, when it is true, as ‘he has come,’ nor on that account is fate or necessity to be dreaded. For it will be necessary to confess: ‘If this proposition, “Hortensius will come to his Tusculan villa,” is not true, it follows that it is false.’ But these men will have neither of the two—which cannot be. Nor will that ‘lazy argument,’ as it is called, hinder us; for a certain argument is named by the philosophers argos logos, and if we should obey it, we should do nothing at all in life.
For they put the question thus: ‘If it is fated for you to recover from this illness, then whether you call in a physician or do not call him in, you will recover; likewise, if it is fated for you not to recover from this illness, then whether you call in a physician or do not call him in, you will not recover; and one or the other is fated; therefore it is of no use to call in a physician.’ Rightly has this kind of questioning been named ‘lazy’ and ‘idle,’ since by the same reasoning all action would be removed from life. One may even change it, so as not to attach the name of fate and yet hold the same opinion, in this way: ‘If it has been true from all eternity, “You will recover from that illness,” then whether you call in a physician or do not, you will recover; and likewise, if it has been false from all eternity, “You will recover from that illness,” then whether you call in a physician or do not, you will not recover’; and so with the rest. This argument is refuted by Chrysippus.
‘For some things,’ he says, ‘among events are simple, others combined. “Socrates will die on that day” is simple; for him, whether he does anything or does not, the day of his dying is fixed. But if the fate shall be thus, “Oedipus will be born to Laius,” it will not be possible to say, “whether Laius has lain with a woman or has not”; for the matter is combined and “cofated”—so he calls it, because it is so fated both that Laius will lie with his wife and that he will beget Oedipus by her—' just as, if it had been said, “Milo will wrestle at Olympia,” and someone should rejoin, “Therefore, whether he has an adversary or has not, he will wrestle,” he would be in error; for “he will wrestle” is combined, because without an adversary there is no wrestling.’ All catches of this kind, therefore, are refuted in the same way. ‘Whether you call in a physician or do not, you will recover’ is a catch; for it is as much a thing of fate to call in a physician as to recover. These things, as I said, he calls ‘cofated.’
Carneades did not approve of this whole kind of reasoning, and thought that this argument was concluded too inconsiderately. And so he pressed it in another way and employed no quibble; his conclusion was this: ‘If all things come to pass by antecedent causes, all things come to pass by a natural binding-together, joined and woven close; if this is so, necessity brings all things about; if this is true, nothing is in our power; but something is in our power; yet, if all things come to pass by fate, all things come to pass by antecedent causes; therefore it is not by fate that whatever comes to pass comes to pass.’
More tightly than this the reasoning cannot be bound. For if anyone should wish to put it the same way and to say thus: ‘If every future event is true from all eternity, so that it certainly comes about in the manner in which it is going to be, all things must necessarily come to pass by a natural binding-together, joined and woven close,’ he would be saying nothing. For it makes a great difference whether a natural cause, from all eternity, makes future things true, or whether even without an eternity in nature it can be understood that the things which are future are true. And so Carneades said that not even Apollo could tell future events, except those whose causes nature so contained that they must necessarily come to pass.
For with a view to what could the god himself declare that Marcellus—the one who was three times consul—was going to perish at sea? This was indeed true from all eternity, but it had no causes to bring it about. Thus Carneades held that not even past events of which no signs survived, as it were as footprints, were known to Apollo—much less future ones! For only when the efficient causes of each thing have been known can it at last be known what is going to be. Therefore Apollo could not have predicted concerning Oedipus, since there were no causes laid down in the nature of things why his father must necessarily be killed by him, nor anything of that sort. Wherefore, if it is consistent for the Stoics, who say that all things come to pass by fate, to approve oracles of this kind and the other things that are derived from divination, while the same is not to be said by those who say that the things which are future are true from all eternity—see to it that the case of the latter be not the same as that of the Stoics; for these are pressed more closely, while the reasoning of the others is loose and free.
But if it be granted that nothing can come about except from an antecedent cause, what is gained, if that cause be said not to be derived from eternal causes? Now a cause is that which brings about the thing of which it is the cause—as a wound is the cause of death, a surfeit of disease, fire of burning. And so a cause must not be so understood that whatever precedes a thing is its cause, but rather what efficiently precedes it; nor was the fact that I went down to the Campus the cause of my playing at ball, nor was Hecuba the cause of the Trojans’ destruction because she bore Alexander, nor Tyndareus the cause to Agamemnon because he begot Clytaemnestra. For in this way a traveller too, well dressed, will be said to have been the cause to the highwayman why he was robbed by him.
Of this kind is that passage of Ennius: ‘Would that in the grove of Pelion the fir-trees, hewn by the axe, had never fallen to the ground!’ He might have gone even higher: ‘Would that no tree had ever grown on Pelion!’—and higher still: ‘Would that no Mount Pelion existed at all!’—and so, fetching back the earlier antecedents in like manner, one may go back without end. ‘Nor thence had the ship taken its first beginning.’ To what purpose are these past events? Because there follows that: ‘For never would my erring mistress have set foot from her home—Medea, sick at heart, wounded by savage love’—†not as though those things furnished the cause of her love.
They say, moreover, that it makes a difference whether a thing is of such a kind that without it something cannot be brought about, or of such a kind that with it something must necessarily be brought about. None of these, then, is a cause, since none of them by its own force brings about the thing of which it is said to be the cause; nor is that a cause without which a thing does not come about, but rather that which, when it has come in, necessarily brings about the thing of which it is the cause. For before Philoctetes had been wounded by the serpent’s bite, what cause was contained in the nature of things that he was going to be left on the island of Lemnos? But afterward the cause was nearer and more closely joined to the outcome.
The relation of the event, then, discloses the cause. But this proposition was true from all eternity: ‘Philoctetes will be left on the island,’ nor could this turn from true into false. For it is necessary, in the case of two contrary statements (and by contrary here I mean those of which the one affirms something, the other denies it)—of these, then, it is necessary, against Epicurus’ will, that the one be true, the other false: so that ‘Philoctetes will be wounded’ was true through all the ages before, and ‘He will not be wounded’ was false—unless perhaps we wish to follow the opinion of the Epicureans, who say that such propositions are neither true nor false, or, when they are ashamed of that, nonetheless say what is more shameless still: that disjunctions composed of contraries are true, but that of the statements contained in them neither is true.
O admirable license and pitiable ignorance of argument! For if anything, in being uttered, is neither true nor false, then certainly it is not true; and what is not true, how can it not be false? Or what is not false, how can it not be true? That, then, which is maintained by Chrysippus will hold good—that every proposition is either true or false; reason itself will compel both that certain things are true from all eternity, and that these are not bound to eternal causes and are free from the necessity of fate.
And to me, indeed, it seems that, since there had been two opinions among the philosophers of old—one of those who held that all things come to pass by fate in such a way that this fate brings the force of necessity (in which opinion were Democritus, Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Aristotle), the other of those to whom it seemed that the voluntary motions of the mind are without any fate—Chrysippus, like an honorary arbiter, wished to strike a middle course, but rather attaches himself to those who would have the motions of the mind freed from necessity; yet, while he uses his own terms, he slips into such difficulties that, against his will, he confirms the necessity of fate.
And this, if you please, let us see what its nature is in the case of assents, which I treated in the first part of my discourse. For those men of old, to whom it seemed that all things come to pass by fate, said that the assents are produced by force and by necessity. But those who dissented from them freed the assents from fate, and denied that, if fate were applied to the assents, necessity could be removed from them; and they argued thus: ‘If all things come to pass by fate, all things come to pass by an antecedent cause; and, if desire does so, then those things too which follow upon desire, and therefore the assents as well; but if the cause of desire is not situated in us, then not even desire itself is in our power; and if this is so, then neither are those things which are brought about by desire situated in us; therefore neither the assents nor the actions are in our power. From which it results that neither praises are just, nor blames, nor honors, nor punishments.’ And since this is faulty, they think it is concluded with probability that not all things come to pass by fate, whatever comes to pass.
But Chrysippus, since he both disapproved of necessity and yet would have nothing come about without antecedent causes, distinguishes kinds of causes, so as both to escape necessity and to retain fate. ‘For of causes,’ he says, ‘some are complete and principal, others auxiliary and proximate. Wherefore, when we say that all things come to pass by fate, by antecedent causes, we do not wish this to be understood—by complete and principal causes—but by auxiliary and proximate causes.’ And so he meets the argument which I concluded a little while ago in this way: that if all things come to pass by fate, it does indeed follow that all things come to pass by antecedent causes, yet not by principal and complete causes, but by auxiliary and proximate ones. And if these themselves are not in our power, it does not follow that desire too is not in our power. But this would follow, if we said that all things come about by complete and principal causes: that, since those causes were not in our power, neither would desire be in our power.
Wherefore, against those who so introduce fate that they attach necessity to it, that conclusion will hold good; but against those who shall not call the antecedent causes complete or principal, it will have no force. For as to what is meant by saying that assents come about by antecedent causes, he thinks he can easily explain its nature. For although an assent cannot occur unless it is set in motion by an impression, yet, since that impression has a proximate cause, not a principal one, it has this account, as Chrysippus would have it, which we mentioned a while ago—not that the assent could occur with no force stirring it from without (for it is necessary that the assent be moved by an impression), but he reverts to his cylinder and his spinning-top, which cannot begin to move unless they are struck. But when that has happened, he holds that thereafter the cylinder rolls and the top spins by their own nature.
‘As, then,’ he says, ‘he who pushed the cylinder gave it the beginning of its motion, but did not give it its capacity to roll, so the impression presented will indeed imprint and, as it were, stamp its appearance upon the mind, but our assent will be in our power; and, just as was said in the case of the cylinder, once struck from without, it will for the rest be moved by its own force and nature. But if anything were brought about without an antecedent cause, it would be false that all things come to pass by fate; whereas, if it is probable that for all things, whatever come to pass, a cause goes before, what can be brought forward to show why it must not be confessed that all things come to pass by fate? Only let it be understood what is the distinction and difference of causes.’
Since these things have been thus explained by Chrysippus, if those who deny that the assents come about by fate †nonetheless confess that they do not occur without an antecedent impression, the reasoning is different; but if they grant that impressions go before, and yet that the assents do not come about by fate, because that proximate and containing cause does not move the assent—see that they do not say the same thing. For neither will Chrysippus, while granting that the proximate and containing cause of assent is placed in the impression, grant that this cause is necessary for assenting, in such a way that, if all things come about by fate, all things come about by antecedent and necessary causes; and likewise those who dissent from him, confessing that the assents do not occur without the prior course of impressions, will say that, if all things came about by fate of such a kind that nothing occurred except by the going-before of a cause, it must be confessed that all things come about by fate. From which it is easy to understand that, since both parties, once their opinion is laid open and explained, come to the same outcome, they differ in words, not in fact.
And altogether, since this is the distinction—that in some matters it can truly be said, when these causes have gone before, that it is not in our power but that those things should come about whose causes they were, while in some matters, though causes have gone before, it is nevertheless in our power that the thing should come about otherwise—both parties approve this distinction; but the one holds that, in those matters in which, when causes have preceded, it is not in our power that they should come about otherwise, these come about by fate; while those that are in our power, from these fate is absent . . .
In this way ought this question to be debated, and not to seek refuge from atoms wandering and swerving from their course. ‘The atom swerves,’ he says. First, why? For they had a certain other force of motion derived from Democritus—that of impact, which he calls a ‘blow’—and from you, Epicurus, the force of weight and heaviness. What new cause, then, is there in nature which makes the atom swerve? Or do they cast lots among themselves, which shall swerve and which not? Or why do they swerve by the least interval and not by a greater? Or why do they swerve by one least interval, and not swerve by two or three?
This is to wish, not to argue. For you say neither that the atom, struck from without, is moved from its place and swerves, nor that in that void through which the atom is carried there was any cause why it should not be borne straight on, nor that any change was wrought in the atom itself, on account of which it should not keep the natural motion of its own weight. And so, when he has brought forward no cause to produce that swerve, he yet seems to himself to be saying something, when he says what the minds of all men spurn and reject.
Nor, indeed, does anyone seem to me to confirm more strongly—not only fate, but even necessity and the compelling force of all things—and to have abolished the voluntary motions of the mind, than this man, who confesses that he could not otherwise withstand fate, unless he had taken refuge in these fictitious swerves. For granted that there were atoms—which indeed can in no way be proved to me to exist—still those swerves would never be accounted for. For if it has been assigned to the atoms, that they are carried by their weight, by a necessity of nature—since every weight must of necessity be moved and carried when nothing impedes it—that other thing too must of necessity be the case: that certain atoms, or, if they will, all atoms, swerve naturally . . .
fr1. And so Marcus Cicero, in the book which he wrote on fate, when he said that this question was most obscure and most entangled, declares that the philosopher Chrysippus too did not extricate himself in it, in these words: ‘Chrysippus, sweating and laboring as to how he may explain both that all things come to pass by fate and that there is something in our power, gets himself entangled in this way.’ (Gellius, Attic Nights 7.2.15)
fr2. ‘And he rolls round the changes’—the definition of fate according to Tully, who says: ‘Fate is the connection of things, holding fast one to another through all eternity, which is varied by its own order and law, yet in such a way that the variation itself possesses eternity.’ (Servius, on Vergil, Aeneid 3.376)
fr3. Those verses of Homer also lend support to this opinion, which Cicero rendered into Latin: ‘Such are the minds of men as is the light with which the Father himself, Jupiter, has flooded the fruitful lands.’ (Augustine, City of God 5.8)
fr4. Cicero says that Hippocrates, the most renowned physician, left it in writing that he suspected certain brothers to be twins, since, when they had begun to fall ill at the same time and their disease grew worse at the same time and abated at the same time. These men Posidonius the Stoic, much given to astrology, used to assert had been born and likewise conceived under the same configuration of the stars. Thus what the physician believed pertained to a very similar temperament of health, this the astrologer-philosopher referred to the force and configuration of the heavenly bodies which had existed at the time they were conceived and born. (Augustine, City of God 5.2)
fr5. And, that a poet may not be too cheap a witness, take Cicero as your authority for the honor in which this fish was held in the eyes of Publius Scipio Africanus, the famous conqueror of Numantia. These are the words of Cicero in the dialogue On Fate: ‘For when Scipio was at his place near Lavernium, and Pontius with him, a sturgeon was by chance brought to Scipio—a fish very rarely caught, but, as they say, of the highest distinction. And when Scipio had invited one and then another of those who had come to pay their respects to him, and seemed about to invite still more, Pontius said in his ear: “Scipio, take care what you do; that sturgeon is a dish for few men.”’ (Macrobius, Saturnalia 3.16.3)