ssen the expenses of
their suppers in certain unnecessary and needless matters, but the
untamed and murderous part of their expense they nothing boggle at.
"Well! What then?" say they. "We have nothing to do with brute beasts."
Nor have you any with perfumes, nor with foreign sauces, may some one
answer; therefore leave these out of your banquets, if you are driving
out everything that is both useless and needless.

Let us therefore in the next place consider, whether we owe any justice
to the brute beasts. Neither shall we handle this point artificially, or
like subtle sophisters, but by casting our eye into our own breasts, and
conversing with ourselves as men, we will weigh and examine the whole
matter....

END OF EIGHT-----------

CONCERNING FATE.

("This little Treatise is so pitiously torne, maimed, and dismembred
thorowout, that a man may sooner divine and guess thereat (as I have
done) than translate it."--HOLLAND.)

I will endeavor, my dearest Piso, to send you my opinion concerning
Fate, written with all the clearness and compendiousness I am capable
of; since you, who are not ignorant how cautious I am of writing, have
thought fit to make it the subject of your request.

You are first, then, to know that this word Fate is spoken and
understood two manner of ways; the one as it is an energy, the other
as it is a substance. First, therefore, as it is an action, Plato (See
Plato, "Phaedrus," p. 248 C; "Timaeus," p.41 E; "Republic," x. p.617
D.) has under a type described it, saying thus in his dialogue entitled
Phaedrus: "And this is a sanction of Adrastea (or an inevitable
ordinance), that whatever soul being an attendant on God," &c. And in
his treatise called Timaeus: "The laws which God in the nature of the
universe has established for immortal souls." And in his book of a
Commonweal he entitles Fate "the speech of the virgin Lachesis, who is
the daughter of Necessity." By which sentences he not tragically but
theologically shows us what his sentiments are in this matter. Now if
any one, paraphrasing the fore-cited passages, would have them expressed
in more familiar terms, the description in Phaedrus may be thus
explained: That Fate is a divine sentence, intransgressible since its
cause cannot be divested or hindered. And according to what he has
said in his Timaeus, it is a law ensuing on the nature of the universe,
according to which all things that are done are transacted. For this
does