Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

440 THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH ANDwhich rules the world : while on his moral side,inasmuch as the first general cause can only bea soul full of reason and wisdom, he is the world-reason, / a blessed beino;. O> the originatoro of the morallaw, ever occupied with the government of theworld, being in fact himself the world. Thuseverything is subject to the law of absolute necessity; everything eternally determined through anendless series of preceding causes, since nothinghappens without a cause, and that again is the workingof a cause before it. What, then, is called,or seems to be, chance, is merely the working ofa cause unknown to us. The will of man is ac-cordingly mere spontaneity. He wills, but whathe wills is inevitable : he determines himself, butalways in consequence of preceding causes. Andsince here every cause is something subject to theconditions of matter, something purely inside theworld, it becomes unalterable destiny. But inasmuchas the series of causes leads back to thefirst, and this first cause has not only a physicalside, but includes intelligence with it, and soeverything in it is foreseen and predetermined,therefore that which considered under the aspectof inevitable necessity is called fate or destiny,viewed as thought may be termed Providence, adivine arrangement.With such a doctrine it is evident that allmorality was reduced to a matter of physics: anyet no sect of Greek philosophers struggled so