ults are effected either by some desire or agitation of mind,
or by habit, or nature, or art, or chance. By desire, as in your case,
when you read this book; by agitation, as in the case of any one who
fears the ultimate issue of the present crisis; by habit, as in the
case of a man who gets easily and rapidly in a passion; by nature, as
vice increases every day; by art, as in the case of a man who paints
well; by chance, as in the case of a man who has a prosperous voyage.
None of these things are without some cause, and yet none of them are
wholly owing to any single cause. But causes of this kind are not
necessary ones.

XVII. But in some of these causes there is a uniform operation, and in
others there is not. In nature and in art there is uniformity; but
in the others there is none. But still of those causes which are not
uniform, some are evident, others are concealed. Those are evident
which touch the desire or judgment of the mind; those are concealed
which are subject to fortune: for as nothing is done without some
cause, this very obscure cause, which works in a concealed manner,
is the issue of fortune. Again, these results which are produced are
partly unintended, partly intentional. Those are unintended which are
produced by necessity; those are intentional which are produced by
design. But those results which are produced by fortune are either
unintended or intentional. For to shoot an arrow is an act of
intention; to hit a man whom you did not mean to hit is the result of
fortune. And this is the topic which you use like a battering-ram in
your forensic pleadings; if a weapon has flown from the man's hand
rather than been thrown by him. Also agitation of mind may be divided
into absence of knowledge and absence of intention. And although they
are to a certain extent voluntary, (for they are diverted from their
course by reproof or by admonition,) still they are liable to such
emotions that even those acts of theirs which are intentional
sometimes seem either unavoidable, or at all events unintentional.

The whole topic of these causes then being now fully explained, from
their differences there is derived a great abundance of arguments in
all the important discussions of orators and philosophers. And in the
cases which you lawyers argue, if there is not so plentiful a stock,
what there are, are perhaps more subtle and shrewd. For in private
actions the decisions in the most important cases appear to me t