t
all that precede, should not (to speak properly) be pronounced to be
fatal or according to Fate.

These things being so, we are next in order to show, how "that which is
in our power" (or free will), Fortune, possible, contingent, and other
like things which are placed among the antecedent causes, can consist
with Fate, and Fate with them; for Fate, as it seems, comprehends all
things, and yet all these things will not happen by necessity, but every
one of them according to the principle of its nature. Now the nature
of the possible is to presubsist, as the genus, and to go before the
contingent; and the contingent, as the matter and subject, is to be in
the sphere of free will; and our free will ought as a master to make
use of the contingent; and Fortune comes in by the side of free will,
through the property of the contingent of inclining to either part. Now
you will more easily apprehend what has been said, if you shall consider
that everything which is generated, and the generation itself, is not
done without a generative faculty or power, and the power is not without
a substance. As for example, neither the generation of man, nor that
which is generated, is without a power; but this power is about man, and
man himself is the substance. Now the power or faculty is between the
substance, which is the powerful, and the generation and the thing
generated, which are both possibles. There being then these three
things, the power, the powerful, and the possible; before the power can
exist, the powerful must of necessity be presupposed as its subject,
and the power must also necessarily subsist before the possible. By
this deduction then may in some measure be understood what is meant by
possible; which may be grossly defined as "that which power is able to
produce;" or yet more exactly, if to this same there be added, "provided
there be nothing from without to hinder or obstruct it." Now of possible
things there are some which can never be hindered, as are those in
heaven, to wit, the rising and setting of the stars, and the like to
these; but others may indeed be hindered, as are the most part of human
things, and many also of those which are done in the air. The first,
as being done by necessity, are called necessary; the others, which may
fall one way or other, are called contingent; and they may both thus be
described. The necessary possible is that whose contrary is impossible;
and the contingent possible is that