a being the third in degree from Jupiter; the first of beings
is Jupiter, the second Nature, and the third Fate.

CHAPTER XXIX. OF FORTUNE.

Plato says, that it is an accidental cause and a casual consequence in
things which proceed from the election and counsel of men. Aristotle,
that it is an accidental cause in those things done by an impulse for a
certain end; and this cause is uncertain and unstable: there is a great
deal of difference betwixt that which flows from chance and that which
falls out by Fortune; for that which is fortuitous allows also chance,
and belongs to things practical; but what is by chance cannot be also
by Fortune, for it belongs to things without action: Fortune, moreover,
pertains to rational beings, but chance to rational and irrational
beings alike, and even to inanimate things. Epicurus, that it is a cause
not always consistent, but various as to persons, times, and manners.
Anaxagoras and the Stoics, that it is that cause which human reason
cannot comprehend; for there are some things which proceed from
necessity, some things from Fate, some from choice and free-will, some
from Fortune, some from chance.

CHAPTER XXX. OF NATURE.

Empedocles affirms that Nature is nothing else but the mixture and
separation of the elements; for thus he writes in the first book of his
natural philosophy:--

Nature gives neither life nor death,
Mutation makes us die or breathe.
The elements first are mixed, then each
Do part: this Nature is in mortal speech.

Anaxagoras is of the same opinion, that Nature is coalition and
separation, that is, generation and corruption.

BOOK II.

Having finished my dissertation concerning principles and
elements and those things which chiefly appertain to them, I will turn
my pen to discourse of those things which are produced by them, and will
take my beginning from the world, which contains and encompasseth all
beings.

CHAPTER I. OF THE WORLD.

Pythagoras was the first philosopher that called the world [Greek
omitted], from the order and beauty of it; for so that word signifies.
Thales and his followers say the world is one. Democritus, Epicurus,
and their scholar Metrodorus affirm that there are infinite worlds in
an infinite space, for that infinite vacuum in its whole extent contains
them. Empedocles, that the circle which the sun makes in its motion
circumscribes the world, and that circle is the utmost bound of the