(46) Timaeus: the causes which belong to the Intelligent Nature, and put second all such as are of the class of things which are moved by others, and themselves, in turn, move others because they cannot help it. And we also must act likewise. We must declare both kinds of Causes, but keep distinct those which, with the aid of thought, are artificers of things fair and good, and all those which are devoid of intelligence and produce always accidental and irregular effects. Now regarding the auxiliary causes which have helped the eyes to acquire the power which they now possess, let this statement suffice. Next we must declare the most important

(2) But to halt at these nearest determinants, not to be willing to penetrate deeper, indicates a sluggish mind, a dullness to all that calls us towards the primal and transcendent causes.

How comes it that the same surface causes produce different results? There is moonshine, and one man steals and the other does not: under the influence of exactly similar surroundings one man falls sick and the other keeps well; an identical set of operations makes one rich and leaves another poor. The differences amongst us in manners, in characters, in success, force us to go still further back.

Men therefore have never been able to rest at the surface causes.

One school postulates material principles, such as atoms; from the movement, from the collisions and combinations of these, it derives the existence and the mode of being of all particular phenomena, supposing that all depends upon how these atoms are agglomerated, how they act, how they are affected; our own impulses and states, even, are supposed to be determined by these principles.

Such teaching, then, obtrudes this compulsion, an atomic Anagke, even upon Real Being. Substitute, for the atoms, any other material entities as principles and the cause of all things, and at once Real Being becomes servile to the determination set up by them.

Others rise to the first-principle of all that exists and from it derive all they tell of a cause penetrating all things, not merely moving all but making each and everything; but they pose this as a fate and a supremely dominating cause; not merely all else that comes into being, but even our own thinking and thoughts would spring from its movement, just as the several members of an animal move not at their own choice but at the dictation of the leading principle which animal life presupposes.

Yet another school fastens on the universal Circuit as embracing all things and producing all by its motion and by the positions and mutual aspect of the planets and fixed stars in whose power of foretelling they find warrant for the belief that this Circuit is the universal determinant.

Finally, there are those that dwell on the interconnection of the causative forces and on their linked descent- every later phenomenon following upon an earlier, one always leading back to others by which it arose and without which it could not be, and the latest always subservient to what went before them- but this is obviously to bring in fate by another path. This school may be fairly distinguished into two branches; a section which makes all depend upon some one principle and a section which ignores such a unity.

Of this last opinion we will have something to say, but for the moment we will deal with the former, taking the others in their turn.

(1) In the two orders of things- those whose existence is that of process and those in whom it is Authentic Being- there is a variety of possible relation to Cause.

Cause might conceivably underly all the entities in both orders or none in either. It might underly some, only, in each order, the others being causeless. It might, again, underly the Realm of Process universally while in the Realm of Authentic Existence some things were caused, others not, or all were causeless. Conceivably, on the other hand, the Authentic Existents are all caused while in the Realm of Process some things are caused and others not, or all are causeless.

Now, to begin with the Eternal Existents:

The Firsts among these, by the fact that they are Firsts, cannot be referred to outside Causes; but all such as depend upon those Firsts may be admitted to derive their Being from them.

And in all cases the Act may be referred to the Essence , for their Essence consists, precisely, in giving forth an appropriate Act.

As for Things of Process- or for Eternal Existents whose Act is not eternally invariable- we must hold that these are due to Cause; Causelessness is quite inadmissible; we can make no place here for unwarranted "slantings," for sudden movement of bodies apart from any initiating power, for precipitate spurts in a soul with nothing to drive it into the new course of action. Such causelessness would bind the Soul under an even sterner compulsion, no longer master of itself, but at the mercy of movements apart from will and cause. Something willed- within itself or without- something desired, must lead it to action; without motive it can have no motion.

On the assumption that all happens by Cause, it is easy to discover the nearest determinants of any particular act or state and to trace it plainly to them.

The cause of a visit to the centre of affairs will be that one thinks it necessary to see some person or to receive a debt, or, in a word, that one has some definite motive or impulse confirmed by a judgement of expediency. Sometimes a condition may be referred to the arts, the recovery of health for instance to medical science and the doctor. Wealth has for its cause the discovery of a treasure or the receipt of a gift, or the earning of money by manual or intellectual labour. The child is traced to the father as its Cause and perhaps to a chain of favourable outside circumstances such as a particular diet or, more immediately, a special organic aptitude or a wife apt to childbirth.

And the general cause of all is Nature.

(1) If both the orders, those on the right and those on the left, are brought together with one another by the thought which is set between them, which gives them their organization with each other, it happens that they both act with the same emulation of their deeds, with those of the right resembling those of the left, and those of the left resembling those of the right. And if at times the evil order begins to do evil in a foolish way, the order emulates, in the form of a man of violence, also doing what is evil, as if it were a power of a man of violence. At other times the foolish order attempts to do good, making itself like it, since the hidden order, too, is zealous to do it. Just as it is in the things which are established, so (it is) in the things which have come to be. Since they bring things unlike one another, those who were not instructed were unable to know the cause of the things which exist. Therefore, they have introduced other types (of explanation), some saying that it is according to providence that the things which exist have their being. These are the people who observe the stability and the conformity of the movement of creation. Others say that it is something alien. These are people who observe the diversity and the lawlessness and the evil of the powers. Others say that the things which exist are what is destined to happen. These are the people who were occupied with this matter. Others say that it is something in accordance with nature. Others say that it is a self-existent. The majority, however, all who have reached as far as the visible elements, do not know anything more than them.

(1) Consider, therefore, also another genus of causes; how a stone or a herb frequently possess from themselves a nature corruptive, or again collective of generated natures. For this is not only the case with these, but this physical power is also in greater natures and greater things, which those who are not able to infer by a reasoning process, will perhaps transfer the works and energies of nature to more excellent beings [ i. e. to Gods, angels, and dæmons]. Now, therefore, it is acknowledged that the tribe of evil dæmons has a very extended power in generation, in human affairs, and in such things as subsist about the earth. Hence, why is it wonderful that a tribe of this kind should effect such works as these? For every man is not able to distinguish a good from an evil dæmon, or by what peculiarities the one is separated from the other. Hence those, who are not able to perceive the difference between the two, absurdly reason concerning the cause of them, and refer this cause to genera superior to nature and the dæmoniacal order. If, also, certain powers of a partial soul are assumed in order to effect these things, whether such a soul is detained in body, or has left the testaceous and terrestrial body, but wanders about the places of generation in a turbid and humid spirit; this, indeed, will be a true opinion, but separates the cause of these things at the greatest distance from more excellent natures. By no means, therefore, is that which is divine, or any good dæmon, subservient to the illegal desires of men in venereal concerns. For of these things there are many other causes.

(1) After the body of the universe, also, many things are generated by the nature of it. For the concord of similars, and the contrariety of dissimilars, effect not a few things. Farther still, the assemblage of many things into the one animal of the universe, and the powers in the world, whatever the number and quality of them may be, effect, in short, one thing in wholes and another in parts, on account of the divided imbecility of parts. Thus, for instance, the friendship, love, and contention which subsist in energy in the universe, become passions in the partial natures by which they are participated. Those things, likewise, that are preestablished in forms and pure reasons in the nature of wholes, participate of a certain material indigence, and privation of morphe , in things which subsist according to a part. And things which are conjoined to each other in wholes are separated in parts. Hence partible natures, which participate of wholes in conjunction with matter, degenerate from them in all things, and also from what is beautiful and perfect. But some parts are corrupted, in order that wholes may be preserved in a condition conformable to nature. Sometimes, likewise, parts are compressed and weighed down, though at the same time wholes remain impassive to a molestation of this kind.

(1) We, however, admit all these assertions; physical essences, indeed, being coexcited as in one animal, according to aptitude or sympathy, as in another respect being subjects, and following and being subservient to the cause of the efficacy of sacrifices; but dæmons, and terrene or mundane divine powers, being primarily familiarized to our order; nevertheless, we must say, that the most perfect and leading cause of the efficacy of sacrifices is to be conjoined to demiurgic and the most perfect powers. But since these comprehend in themselves all the causes of sacrifice, we say that all the effective causes of it are at once coexcited together with these. And from all these a common utility is imparted to the whole of generation; sometimes through cities and people, or all various nations, or circumscriptions more or less extended than these; but at other times through houses, or an individual, these causes impart good with an unenvying and exuberant will, unaccompanied with passion; conferring their benefits with an impassive intellect, according to adaptation and alliance; one friendship at the same time which connectedly contains all things, producing this bond through a certain ineffable communion.

(7) But all the proportions of nature individually are comprehended in the whole nature of the whole, within one unconfused union; and in the soul, the powers of each several part are provident of the whole body in a uniform fashion. There is nothing out of place then, that, by ascending from obscure images to the Cause of all, we should contemplate, with supermundane eyes, all things in the Cause of all, even those contrary to each other, after a single fashion and unitedly. For It is Source of things existing, from which are both being itself, and all things however being; every source, every term, every life, every immortality, every wisdom, every order, every harmony, every power, every protection, every stability, every endurance, every conception, every word, every sensible perception, every habit, every standing, every movement, every union, every mingling, every friendship, every agreement, every difference, every limit, and whatever other things existing by being, characterize all things being.

(38) Whatever springs automatically from the All out of that distinctive life of its own, and, in addition to that self-moving activity, whatever is due to some specific agency- for example, to prayers, simple or taking the form of magic incantations- this entire range of production is to be referred, not to each such single cause, but to the nature of the thing produced .

All that forwards life or some other useful purpose is to be ascribed to the transmission characteristic of the All; it is something flowing from the major of an integral to its minor. Where we think we see the transmission of some force unfavourable to the production of living beings, the flaw must be found in the inability of the subject to take in what would serve it: for what happens does not happen upon a void; there is always specific form and quality; anything that could be affected must have an underlying nature definite and characterized. The inevitable blendings, further, have their constructive effect, every element adding something contributory to the life. Then again some influence may come into play at the time when the forces of a beneficent nature are not acting: the co-ordination of the entire system of things does not always allow to each several entity everything that it needs: and further we ourselves add a great deal to what is transmitted to us.

None the less all entwines into a unity: and there is something wonderful in the agreement holding among these various things of varied source, even of sources frankly opposite; the secret lies in a variety within a unity. When by the standard of the better kind among things of process anything falls short- the reluctance of its material substratum having prevented its perfect shaping under idea- it may be thought of as being deficient in that noble element whose absence brings to shame: the thing is a blend, something due to the high beings, an alloy from the underlying nature, something added by the self.

Because all is ever being knit, all brought to culmination in unity, therefore all events are indicated; but this does not make virtue a matter of compulsion; its spontaneity is equally inwoven into the ordered system by the general law that the things of this sphere are pendant from the higher, that the content of our universe lies in the hands of the diviner beings in whom our world is participant.

(1) The same absurdities likewise happen from assigning, as the causes of what is effected by sacrifices, either certain numbers that are with us, such, for instance, as assuming the number sixty in the crocodile, as adapted to the sun; or physical reasons, as the powers and energies of animals, for instance, of the dog , the cynocephalus, and the weasel , these being common to the moon; or material forms, such as are seen in sacred animals according to the colours, and all the forms of the body; or any thing else pertaining to the bodies of animals, or of other things which are offered; or a certain member, as the heart of a cock; or other things of the like kind which are surveyed about nature, if they are considered as the causes of the efficacy in sacrifices. For from these things the Gods are not demonstrated to be supernatural causes; nor, as such, to be excited by sacrifices. But they are considered as physical causes detained by matter, and as physically involved in bodies, and coexcited and becoming quiescent together with them, these things also existing about nature. If, therefore, any thing of this kind takes place in sacrifices, it follows as a concause, and as having the relation of that without which a thing is not effected; and thus it is suspended from precedaneous causes.

(1) Moreover, it is necessary to add the causes whence evils sometimes arise, and to show how many and of what kind they are. For the form of them is not simple; but, being various, is the leader of the generation of various evils. For if what we a little before said, concerning images and evil dæmons, who assume the appearance of Gods and good dæmons, is true, an abundant evil-producing tribe, about which a contrariety of this kind usually happens, will from hence appear to flow. For an evil dæmon requires that his worshipper should be just, because he assumes the appearance of one belonging to the divine genus; but he is subservient to what is unjust, because he is depraved. The same thing, likewise, that is said of good and evil may be asserted of the true and the false. As, therefore, in divinations we attribute true predictions to the Gods alone, but when we detect any falsehood in predictions we refer this to another genus of cause, viz. that of dæmons; thus, also, in things just and unjust, the beautiful and the just are to be alone ascribed to Gods and good dæmons; but such dæmons as are naturally depraved, perpetrate what is unjust and base. And that, indeed, which consents and accords with itself, and always subsists with invariable sameness, pertains to more excellent natures; but that which is hostile to itself, which is discordant, and never the same, is the peculiarity in the most eminent degree of dæmoniacal dissension, about which it is not at all wonderful that things of an opposing nature should subsist; but perhaps the very contrary, that this should not be the case, would be more wonderful.

(1) We may, however, beginning from another hypothesis, demonstrate the same thing. We must admit that the corporeal parts of the universe are neither sluggish nor destitute of power, but as much as they excel our concerns in perfection, beauty, and magnitude, by so much also is the power which is present with them greater. Each, likewise, by itself is capable of effecting different things, and produces certain different energies. They are also capable of effecting things much more numerous on each other. And besides this, a certain multiform production extends to parts from wholes; partly from sympathy, through similitude of powers, and partly from the aptitude of the agent to the patient. If, therefore, certain evils and destructions happen to parts, they are salutary and good as with reference to wholes and the harmony of the universe, but to parts they introduce a necessary corruption, either from not being able to bear the energies of wholes, or from a certain other commixture and temperament of their own imbecility, or, in the third place, from the privation of symmetry in the parts to each other.

(5) There is, then a Providence, which permeates the Kosmos from first to last, not everywhere equal, as in a numerical distribution, but proportioned, differing, according to the grades of place- just as in some one animal, linked from first to last, each member has its own function, the nobler organ the higher activity while others successively concern the lower degrees of the life, each part acting of itself, and experiencing what belongs to its own nature and what comes from its relation with every other. Strike, and what is designed for utterance gives forth the appropriate volume of sound while other parts take the blow in silence but react in their own especial movement; the total of all the utterance and action and receptivity constitutes what we may call the personal voice, life and history of the living form. The parts, distinct in Kind, have distinct functions: the feet have their work and the eyes theirs; the understanding serves to one end, the Intellectual Principle to another.

But all sums to a unity, a comprehensive Providence. From the inferior grade downwards is Fate: the upper is Providence alone: for in the Intellectual Kosmos all is Reason-Principle or its Priors-Divine Mind and unmingled Soul-and immediately upon these follows Providence which rises from Divine Mind, is the content of the Unmingled Soul, and, through this Soul, is communicated to the Sphere of living things.

This Reason-Principle comes as a thing of unequal parts, and therefore its creations are unequal, as, for example, the several members of one Living Being. But after this allotment of rank and function, all act consonant with the will of the gods keeps the sequence and is included under the providential government, for the Reason-Principle of providence is god-serving.

All such right-doing, then, is linked to Providence; but it is not therefore performed by it: men or other agents, living or lifeless, are causes of certain things happening, and any good that may result is taken up again by Providence. In the total, then, the right rules and what has happened amiss is transformed and corrected. Thus, to take an example from a single body, the Providence of a living organism implies its health; let it be gashed or otherwise wounded, and that Reason-Principle which governs it sets to work to draw it together, knit it anew, heal it, and put the affected part to rights.

In sum, evil belongs to the sequence of things, but it comes from necessity. It originates in ourselves; it has its causes no doubt, but we are not, therefore, forced to it by Providence: some of these causes we adapt to the operation of Providence and of its subordinates, but with others we fail to make the connection; the act instead of being ranged under the will of Providence consults the desire of the agent alone or of some other element in the Universe, something which is either itself at variance with Providence or has set up some such state of variance in ourselves.

The one circumstance does not produce the same result wherever it acts; the normal operation will be modified from case to case: Helen's beauty told very differently on Paris and on Idomeneus; bring together two handsome people of loose character and two living honourably and the resulting conduct is very different; a good man meeting a libertine exhibits a distinct phase of his nature and, similarly, the dissolute answer to the society of their betters.

The act of the libertine is not done by Providence or in accordance with Providence; neither is the action of the good done by Providence- it is done by the man- but it is done in accordance with Providence, for it is an act consonant with the Reason-Principle. Thus a patient following his treatment is himself an agent and yet is acting in accordance with the doctor's method inspired by the art concerned with the causes of health and sickness: what one does against the laws of health is one's act, but an act conflicting with the Providence of medicine.

(25) The fourth cause of disease was what the Orientals called Karma, that is, the Law of Compensation, which demanded that the individual pay in full for the indiscretions and delinquencies of the past. A physician had to be very careful how he interfered with the workings of this law, lest he thwart the plan of Eternal justice. The fifth cause was the motion and aspects of the heavenly bodies. The stars did not compel the sickness but rather impelled it. The Hermetists taught that a strong and wise man ruled his stars, but that a negative, weak person was ruled by them. These five causes of disease are all superphysical in nature. They must be estimated by inductive and deductive reasoning and a careful consideration of the life and temperament of the patient.

(7) It remains to notice the theory of the one Causing-Principle alleged to interweave everything with everything else, to make things into a chain, to determine the nature and condition of each phenomenon- a Principle which, acting through seminal Reason-Forms- Logoi Spermatikoi- elaborates all that exists and happens.

The doctrine is close to that which makes the Soul of the Universe the source and cause of all condition and of all movement whether without or- supposing that we are allowed as individuals some little power towards personal act- within ourselves.

But it is the theory of the most rigid and universal Necessity: all the causative forces enter into the system, and so every several phenomenon rises necessarily; where nothing escapes Destiny, nothing has power to check or to change. Such forces beating upon us, as it were, from one general cause leave us no resource but to go where they drive. All our ideas will be determined by a chain of previous causes; our doings will be determined by those ideas; personal action becomes a mere word. That we are the agents does not save our freedom when our action is prescribed by those causes; we have precisely what belongs to everything that lives, to infants guided by blind impulses, to lunatics; all these act; why, even fire acts; there is act in everything that follows the plan of its being, servilely.

No one that sees the implications of this theory can hesitate: unable to halt at such a determinant principle, we seek for other explanations of our action.