atter is subject to mutation, say that
generation and corruption are to be accepted in their proper sense, and
that they are accomplished by the alteration, mutation, and dissolution
of elements.

CHAPTER XXV. OF NECESSITY.

Thales says that necessity is omnipotent, and that it exerciseth an
empire over everything. Pythagoras, that the world is invested by
necessity. Parmenides and Democritus, that there is nothing in the world
but what is necessary, and that this same necessity is otherwise called
fate, justice, providence, and the architect of the world.

CHAPTER XXVI. OF THE NATURE OF NECESSITY.

But Plato distinguisheth and refers some things to Providence, others
to necessity. Empedocles makes the nature of necessity to be that cause
which employs principles and elements. Democritus makes it to be a
resistance, impulse, and force of matter. Plato sometimes says that
necessity is matter; at other times, that it is the habitude or respect
of the efficient cause towards matter.

CHAPTER XXVII. OF DESTINY OR FATE.

Heraclitus, who attributes all things to fate, makes necessity to be
the same thing with it. Plato admits of a necessity in the minds and the
acts of men, but yet he introduceth a cause which flows from ourselves.
The Stoics, in this agreeing with Plato, say that necessity is a cause
invincible and violent; that fate is the ordered complication of causes,
in which there is an intexture of those things which proceed from our
own determination, so that certain things are to be attributed to fate,
others not.

CHAPTER XXVIII. OF THE NATURE OF FATE.

According to Heraclitus, the essence of fate is a certain reason which
penetrates the substance of all being; and this is an ethereal body,
containing in itself that seminal faculty which gives an original to
every being in the universe. Plato affirms that it is the eternal reason
and the eternal law of the nature of the world. Chrysippus, that it is a
spiritual faculty, which in due order doth manage and rule the universe.
Again, in his book styled the "Definitions," that fate is the reason
of the world, or that it is that law whereby Providence rules and
administers everything that is in the world; or it is that reason by
which all things have been, all things are, and all things will be
produced. The Stoics say that it is a chain of causes, that is, it is
an order and connection of causes which cannot be resisted. Posidonius,
that it is