Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE GEEEK PHILOSOPHY.443their agglomeration is produced: and thus it is awork of pure chance that out of these, the count-s worlds which frame the universe began to 1Any order or higher guidance of the universe, asdirected to a purpose, is not to be thought ofnore than necessary laws, according to which thppearances of nature reproduce themsca law would ultimately lead to a lawgiver, andthis miht reawaken fear, > and disturb the wiseman's repose. He utterly denied the interventioneither of one god or of many gods in the formingor the maintenance of the world: the main purposeindeed of his philosophy was to overthrowthat religious view which saw in the argunienfrom design a sure proof of a divine Providence.24Nothing, he thought, was more perverted thanthat the opinion that nature was directed for thef man, or g.11:that we have tongues in order to speak, or earsin order to hear, for in fact just the reverse istrue. We speak because we have tongues, andhear because we have ears. The powers of naturehave worked purely under the law of necessity.Among their manifold productions some werenecessarily composed in accordance with an end:hence resulted for man in particular many meansand powers; but such result must not be viewedas intentional, rather as a purely casual conse-nce of naturally necessary operations. God21 Zeller, vol. iii. part 1, p. 370.