itself
of an house or a ship is the art of the mason, the carpenter, or the
shipwright; but accidental causes are music, geometry, and whatever else
may happen to be joined with the art of building houses or ships, in
respect either of the body, the soul, or any exterior thing. Whence it
appears, that the cause by itself must needs be determinate and one;
but the causes by accident are never one and the same, but infinite and
undetermined. For many--nay, infinite--accidents, wholly different one
from the other, may be in one and the same subject. Now the cause by
accident, when it is found in a thing which not only is done for some
end but has in it free will and election, is then called Fortune; as is
the finding a treasure while one is digging a hole to plant a tree, or
the doing or suffering some extraordinary thing whilst one is flying,
following, or otherwise walking, or only turning about, provided it be
not for the sake of that which happens, but for some other intention.
Hence it is, that some of the ancients have declared Fortune to be a
cause unknown that cannot be foreseen by the human reason. But according
to the Platonics, who have approached yet nearer to the true reason of
it, it is thus defined: Fortune is a cause by accident, in those
things which are done for some end, and which are of our election. And
afterwards they add, that it is unforeseen and unknown to the human
reason; although that which is rare and strange appears also by the same
means to be in this kind of cause by accident. But what this is, if it
is not sufficiently evidenced by the oppositions and disputations made
against it, will at least most clearly be seen by what is written in
Plato's Phaedo, where you will find these words:--

PHAED. Have you not heard how and in what manner the judgment passed?
ECH. Yes indeed; for there came one and told us of it. At which we
wondered very much that, the judgment having been given long before, it
seems that he died a great while after. And what, Phaedo, might be the
cause of it? PHAED. It was a fortune which happened to him, Echecrates.
For it chanced that, the day before the judgment, the prow of the galley
which the Athenians send every year to the isle of Delos was crowned.
(Plato, "Phaedo," p.58 A.)

In which discourse it is to be observed, that the expression HAPPENED TO
HIM is not simply to be understood by WAS DONE or CAME TO PASS, but
it much rather regards what befell him through the