Page:The academic questions, treatise de finibus, and Tusculan disputations.djvu/54

 sions—I mean, water and the earth—have the power of receiving, and, as it were, of suffering. The fifth class, from which the stars and winds were formed, Aristotle considered to be a separate essence, and different from those four which I have mentioned above.

But they think that there is placed under all of these a certain matter without any form, and destitute of all quality (for we may as well, by constant use, make this word more usual and notorious), from which all things are sketched out and made; which can receive everything in its entirety, and can be changed in every manner and in every part. And also that it perishes, not so as to become nothing, but so as to be dissolved with its component parts, which again are able to be cut up and divided, ad infinitum; since there is absolutely nothing in the whole nature of things which cannot be divided: and those things which are moved, are all moved at intervals, which intervals again are capable of being infinitely divided. And, since that power which we have called quality is moved in this way, and is agitated in every direction, they think also that the whole of matter is itself entirely changed, and so that those things are produced which they call qualities, from which the world is made, in universal nature, cohering together and connected with all its divisions; and, out of the world, there is no such thing as any portion of matter or any body.

And they say that the parts of the world are all the things which exist in it, and which are maintained by sentient nature; in which perfect reason is placed, which is also everlasting: for that there is nothing more powerful which can be the cause of its dissolution. And this power they call the soul of the world, and also its intellect and perfect wisdom. And they call it God, a providence watching over everything subject to its dominion, and, above all, over the heavenly bodies; and, next to them, over those things on earth which concern men: which also they sometimes call necessity, because nothing can be done in a manner different from that in which it has been arranged by it in a destined (if I may so say) and inevitable continuation of eternal order. Sometimes, too, they call it fortune, because it brings about many unforeseen things, which have never been expected by us, on account of the obscurity of their causes, and our ignorance of them.