Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3 · Plutarch
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. 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. 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.
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