Against Fate 1–6

Against Fate

You surely remember what happened to me when I was with you recently, [after a long time]. The great mountain of unbelief, to speak in the language of the gospel, was moved to faith, the most wise Eusebius having taken counsel in his old age worthily of his grey hairs, if one should reckon this a man's counsel at all, and not some divine aid [of the one who] governs human life for good. Then, when I was astonished at the unexpectedness of the wonder, how such a man, formerly in unbelief, had surpassed the measure of his unbelief many times over by the greatness of his faith, and as our conversation went on talk turned to the questions about fate, you commanded me, my honoured and sacred head, to relate to you in writing, by letter, the discussion I had with one of the philosophers in the great city of Constantine on this subject. Having found a little leisure, then, I set it out for you briefly, cutting the account short as far as possible, in a simple and unadorned narrative, taking care above all that the account should not fall far beyond the measure of a letter into the length of a treatise.

I was bringing certain [arguments] of our religion to a man educated in the outside wisdom, as one could guess from what he said, and was trying to persuade him to change over from Hellenism to assent to our doctrine. But he insisted at length that the choice of what is willed does not lie in the power of those who wish it, but he made human life depend on some necessity, without which none of the things that happen in us would happen. And by this argument he was putting off my [reasoning]: if it was fated for him to become a Christian, he would certainly become one, even if we did not wish it; [but if not], by the necessity of fate, no means could be found that would force fate. When he said this, I thought, as was natural, that he was fleeing from learning anything about the faith, being deeply sunk in Hellenism, and in this way was putting off the course of our argument. But since he did not let up, persisting in the same things, saying that all things were yoked under the necessity of fate, that it presided over beings, and that all beings bowed to its turning, the measures of life, the differences of character, the choices of ways of life, the constitutions of bodies, and the inequalities of rank: that the one who comes to rule by fate certainly rules, and for the same cause one is a slave, and likewise is rich or poor, and again is healthy in body or sick; that a short life and a long life have the same cause; for the one who shares in life for a short time and the one who prolongs his life over a long time each comes to be in each not by his own impulse but from that necessity; that voluntary death and compelled death are allotted by nothing other than it, and the manifold differences of violent death, in accidents, or by the verdict of a court, or by [attacks]; and connecting also with that cause the still more general and comprehensive calamities, earthquakes and shipwrecks and floods of water and disasters from fire, and all such kinds of evils, he added that in the pursuits of life the reasoning of the one who chooses is nowhere master, but that all, serving the power of fate, either practise philosophy, or rhetoric, or farm, or sail, or live in marriage, or choose the unmarried life; and he insisted that there is the same necessity for virtue and vice. So that, according to this inviolable allotment, one devotes himself to the higher life, living a life without possessions and free; [another is drawn to gluttony and drunkenness, or] grows effeminate in a whore's life. And going through all such things, he thought he had shown a strong reason for not accepting our argument: that it is not in our power to choose by our own authority whatever we wish, but that one must wait for that necessity; when it gives the signal for such an impulse, one must of necessity assent to the argument, even unwilling; and without it, even if one chooses vehemently, it cannot happen.

While he was going through these and such things, I asked him whether he thought that what is called by the name of fate, by whose will he believed each thing to be governed, is some God who has power over all things. But he, condemning my great [ignorance], said, "You do not seem to me to have understood anything of the heavenly things. For then you would have known the power of fate, and how the power of things in sequence (εἱρμός) was left [to it]." When I was a stranger to this language too, and asked to learn something more clearly, whether he imagined fate to be some power of choice, sovereign and masterless, seen in a [self-sufficient] authority, or supposed it to be something else, he took up the same argument again and said: "The one who has examined the movement of the heavenly bodies, the zodiac circle and the twelve divisions in it, standing equally apart from one another in the outline of the signs seen in them, and has understood the power of each of the stars, what strength each has of itself by nature, what their conjunction works from the particular mixing with one another, the property of the power of each being mixed by approach to the other and separated by distance; and again what the going under of the lower works and what the eclipse of the higher in passing, and again its restoration; and the varied [shapes] of those that come together and stand apart, [forming triangles or squares in their] figures, or some other of the figures seen in geometry, the one who has understood these and such things will know what fate signifies: that what is necessarily brought about by an inviolable sequence (εἱρμός), according to the particular interweaving of the stars, is interpreted by the name of fate (εἱμαρμένη)."

Since this too was strange to me (for I understood nothing of what was said, not having been educated in this learning), I asked him to make what he said plain to me through things by which it was possible for me to know the meaning of fate. For [I said] that the circles of the stars are set one within another, and revolve inwardly with a motion contrary to the revolution of the fixed sphere, and all of them wheel within the zodiac circle: these things I said I had heard from others too, and did not doubt the consequence, that the lights of the luminaries approach and stand apart according to the revolution peculiar to each of the spheres, and the lower goes under, and the higher is hidden from our sight if it comes to be behind the one going under; and all that it is reasonable to reckon in consequence, whether some figure is produced by these when the circle by its own motion carries round the star set in it, so that it comes to be either in a straight line with the higher or slanting in its passage; whether the period of each of these comes about through a short interval of time or a longer one, according to the size of the proportion of each of the circles, the return necessarily [coming about] faster or slower.

All these and such things I asked him to leave in silence, and only to uncover to me clearly the power of fate: whether what is understood by the name of fate is some God, holding power over the universe and governing all things by authority as he sees fit by the superiority of his power; or whether he supposes the power of fate to be the servant of some other higher activity, so that it too in a way lies under another fate, disposed along with the superior cause. For if this is believed to have power over all things, the consequence of the argument lets us think that nothing is [above] it. But if he maintains that fate, following the movement of the stars, rules all things by some violent necessity, it would be safer to testify this all-powerful authority to what leads rather than to what follows, and to call the stars the causes of these things, or the revolution of the fixed sphere, or the circles seen within it, or the circle [fixed] to the pole. For if someone should grant by hypothesis that these do not move, either by their eternal revolution or [by approaching and withdrawing] from one another, but always remain in the same figure, fate would not come into being. If, then, the movement of the stars begets fate, is it not in vain that fate is thought to rule the rest, since it serves the higher cause and would not exist if the movement did not exist?

"But that is not it," says the philosopher; "our account does not hold that fate is something in itself, seen in a subsistence of its own. But since there is a certain single sympathy in beings, and the universe is continuous with itself, and the individual things seen in the universe are grasped as in one body in one common breath, all the parts inclining toward one another, for this reason, since the upper region is more governing, all earthly things are disposed together with what leads, and incline toward it according to the upper movement, the things here being of necessity moved together with it, with the power of each of the stars, as has been said, seen in difference. As in the medical art of drugs, the qualities of the ingredients, mixed skilfully in a certain proportion, produce something else blended from what is common, and not what each was before their mixing with one another, so too, since the stellar powers are seen in different properties, the varied [movement] of them and the interweaving of the different properties [produce] the varied

differences of what is brought about in life, as though some outflow reached us from there without interruption. For this reason the predictions of the future made by those who study such things do not fail. For as the one who knows the medical art, [if he knows] the hot or numbing [drug], foretells the property that will arise from the mixing of things of different natures, and what it works, and how far its strength will reach, and for whom it becomes deadly and for whom an antidote, so too the one who has attended diligently to the heavenly things and understood the nature of each of them will know what the power from their particular interweaving will bring about. And this outflow is never like itself even for a short time; but because the movement of the stars that interweave with one another is always unstable, it too necessarily changes with the continuity of the otherness in the movement, always being mixed anew with the variety of the movement and changing its activities with the movement of the stars. Each of those who come into life, having drawn from this outflow the portion that met him in the instant of the interval, becomes that which the property of that part foretold and brought about. For of every necessity, as in the impression of a seal the form of the engraving is stamped on the wax put into it, so the life of man is stamped according to the property of that part of the power flowing from the movement of the stars which it happened to meet; and he becomes that which the portion of the outflow held in itself, which he drew in at once at the beginning of life. Once sealed by it, according to the power seen there, he is necessarily conformed in the character of his life, doing or suffering those things whose beginnings or causes the first encounter with that stellar outflow laid down."

When this was said, I said to him: "Will you not stop going through silly talk and nonsense to me, making that partless part of momentary participation, which flows upon us from above, as you say, the cause of all that is in us, neither saying whether it is living and capable of choice, nor able to show how what is lifeless and without subsistence, with no impulse of its own from nature, prevails over living beings, but setting over every will, every forethought of reasoning, education, diligence, and the practices of virtue, like a tyrant or master, what is lifeless and without choice, unstable and passing, partless and without subsistence? Do you make the constitution and government of beings depend on its power, and not see into what absurdities the argument is carried? For if that portion of the outflow has such power as to make those who come to be at its first passing according to itself, it will surely lead the constitution of beings not by following but by going before. So it will bring forth the one being born according to its own power, and not [be determined by] the [birth] here. [But one cannot say] which leads which, since both come together equally in the instant. For man, even before he comes out of the womb, is in a way in motion, moved in nature by diminution and increase (for this too is a kind of motion); and the star, before the man draws in the air, is carried along and does not stand still; and the meeting, being equal on the part of those that meet one another through motion, makes the judgment of what leads impossible. For those move through their circles, and this one is carried along journeying through nature.

But if the meeting of the two with each other happens in one part of time, what difference is there between them, so as to think the one more a cause than the other? For if man exists because of the stars, nature would always be flowing through birth, showing not even an instant's interval in the coming of human beings. But if there are many intervals between births, it is clearly shown that human birth does not follow the movement of the stars. For the one is always moving, while the other is not always being born; but this is carried along in its own sequence, and that again on its own by itself, no necessity joining to each other things separate by nature.

If this is your [argument], that the cause of all things in life lies in that portion of time, consider how many tens of thousands of masters and tyrants every day and night alike produce according to those fine and instantaneous sections of time. Night and day, as you say, are divided into twenty-four hours, each hour divided into sixty sections, and again each of these sections cut into the same number; and, as those of you who penetrate in argument to the finer observation of such things say, each of these sections again by a division of the same number [is divided]: so that the multitude of those momentary gods, or masters, or tyrants, or I do not know what to call them, is more than two hundred and ten thousand. If one hour makes us so many tens of thousands of portions, the twenty-four, multiplied in proportion to the one, beget the boundless tens of thousands of portions. Yet your argument maintains that each of these has an inviolable power. So it follows that none of them is inactive. For you would not call inactivity proper to power; power is surely seen in activity. So the effects of the power are equal too, so that as many [sections] as there are, so many births of men will of necessity come about every hour. And if possibility must be testified equally to each portion, the equality of power makes all equally kings, long-lived, powerful, fortunate, happy, and whatever else is thought to belong to the more honourable lot; for the lack of any of these becomes an accusation of imperfection in the power. For no one would testify to equal power in one who worked great things and in one who worked small.

For example, one man passed a hundred years in a sleek and happy old age, flourishing with children, escorted by grandchildren, exulting in the generation after them, without disease, without harm, honoured, without grief, with wealth in plenty, and called blessed in all that is held honourable in this life. Another was choked as soon as he was brought into the light; such are many of the babes born to harlots or in adultery, whom their mothers, having conceived unlawfully, make away with by their own hands, hiding the proof by death. Where is the power of the portion in these? How did the strength of fate not suffice for the same measure of life? For if your argument thinks one must testify power to it, its strength will appear equally in all beings. For it will not prevail in one and be powerless in another, if it is truly grasped as power; and power is known through its effects.

So life will have no inequality, all alike showing in themselves the highest measure of happiness, because by your argument all lie under fate, and you say that it is always able to do all things. If, then, this fate can do all things and always, it will be able to do all things in all. Yet the differences of life among men are many and varied, in ranks and possessions, in measures of time, in the constitutions of bodies, and in everything by which someone is called blessed or wretched. So the inequality of the effects clearly shows that that portion or fate fashioned by your argument cannot do all things. For if we think long life a work of power, a short life is surely a work of weakness. So one must teach that one of the fates is weak and another powerful. For since a short life is the opposite of a long one, each of these surely subsists through opposites. For no one would connect blessedness and wretchedness with the same cause; but if the one were achieved through power, the other would not have come about [except] surely through the lack of power. For [no one wishes not] to become blessed. Yet the wretched in life are more numerous. So the weakness of fate is shown to be greater than its power. Where, then, is that irresistible, all-powerful, and inviolable necessity, so that the authority over all that is arranged in life is placed in it, when it has been convicted by the sequence of the argument of being weak in more cases?

But you will say that it wills this for this man, and does not will the same for the other, though it can do what it wills in both. Then you will surely add the cause of this difference of its choices. This one and that one are men; you see no variation of nature in the two; neither has this one [done] good or evil by choice, nor the other; but this one, a little ahead in time, leapt from his mother's womb, nature having so delivered him as it happened; and that one after him, either at once or a little later. And after this not the same life is allotted to both: the one is happy, or a king, it may be, wrapped in gold and purple at his very birth; the other [is the son] of one of the poor or of slaves, not even swaddled in rags by those who begot him. What, then, is [the cause] that, not by his own purpose but by the movement of nature, the dishonour of life is allotted to him as though for this very reason? What defence of your [mistress] will you find for these things? Where is justice? Where is piety? Where is holiness? Or do you say that fate cares for none of these, nor looks to virtue, nor takes care of any of the goods? Then, if these are not its concern, it will surely busy itself with the opposite; for estrangement from the good clearly shows kinship with evil. But do you say that perhaps neither this nor that is its care? Then you say it is lifeless and without choice, insensible of better and worse. And if it has neither soul nor choice, and is not seen in a subsistence of its own, how is it testified by you to have such power as to preside over living creatures that have choice, and that what has no subsistence rules over things that subsist, what has no share in life over those who share in life, what is lifeless over the living, what is without choice over those who live by choice, what cannot receive virtue over those who pursue virtue, in short, what is not over the things that are? In what is the subsistence of this much-babbled name grasped? It is not a living being; it is not seen in an outline; it is not thought to be God. For how could that be God which does not look to virtue and justice? And what is none of these, what is it?

But it seems that by you the ever-present instant of time is called fate. For time is extended along with every motion, whether of rivers, or of stars, or of men. And it makes no difference whether the instantaneous sections of time [are counted] through the ever-present time by one who sits by water [watching] the motion of the stream, or by a ship carried by the wind, or by men journeying, or by stars moving. For the definition of motion in all things that move by passing from place to place is one: change from where it is to where it is not. If, then, neither the course of streams, nor the motion of

ships, nor the journeying of men, measuring out the intervals of time, makes fates, how do you fashion the time-points of the movement of the stars into the coming-to-be of fate, and say that this hour, or the smallest part of the hour that was marked at this point of the movement of the stars, becomes fate? Why, then, do births of men not happen at every point? For I shall take up the same argument again. Those from whom comes the cause of a man's being well or ill are surely the same from whom comes the cause of his being. If, then, what follows birth is from them, birth too is surely from the same; [if] this is not in them, neither is what follows it. And that birth is not in them is plain from this: that the births of human beings do not flow on without interruption, like a river, in the continuity of the passing stream of time, but births come at intervals; while of the coming-to-be of those portions which flowing time works through the ever-moving course of the stars there is no interval whatever, either to sense or to thought. What, then, that fate is, whether one more general or the many that are gathered up in the sections of time, the argument has not yet been able to grasp by any consistent sequence.

Do you say that the stars move [in a circle]? We too bring forward in reply the motion of the rivers. But those move continually? These too likewise throughout. But those in time? Nor are these outside time. But no beginning in time can be found for the motion of those? What beginning from time will you devise for these? But those always move in the same way and likewise? Nor would anyone testify the opposite motion to these, the water always flowing by nature from the higher to the slope. So either grant that the motion of rivers too begets certain fates, or we shall not concede this power to the motion of the stars either.

"But," he says, "the Ram or the Bull is of this power, and each of the planets of that. So when one of the planets, carried round periodically by the circle, comes to be in one of these, either alone or with others, the meeting of the power brings about this life for the one who met that hour at birth." O vain talk! You call the Bull, say, servile, because this animal is tamed under the yoke; and the Ram beneficent, because of the bearing of lambs; and you say that one [planet] coming into one of these, or into this one of those rolled up opposite, prepares such a portion for those being born, according to the power naturally present in it, through the mixing of the properties. What then? Tell me, is the bull a beast of burden willingly? And do you say the ram likes being shorn? Is the harmful and numbing [property] in the one that goes round the highest sphere, or the heat in the fiery one, or the power present in any other of those observed, present willingly or unwillingly? If they are in evils willingly and become harmful by choice, the one who says this condemns them outright to misfortune, in that, though the better lot lies before them in their power, they place the more dishonourable in pleasure. But if each of these is not by choice what you think, but has come to be from some necessity, then some other fate again lying above them has spun the properties of their natures and powers. So one must of necessity seek other stars higher than these, and a motion peculiar to themselves, whose particular interweaving, by some necessity of fate, has made the bull servile or the ram harmful, or the crab headless, or whatever else the nonsense of the wise relates about each of these. And if these things that appear to us are such by the necessity of some fate, the argument will surely devise another compelling cause of such a state for that higher necessity too, and another for that, and again another for the other; and so the argument, going on to infinity, will nowhere stop, fashioning fate on fate, portion on portion, and necessity on necessity.