::^94 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book II. 



wonderful effeds, let them < confider ; but this necejfity Is truly their 

 fyftem, not chance. And they are fo far in the right, that all the mo- 

 lions of nature, which are not from choice or deliberation, may be 

 faid to be neceiTary. And, accordingly, whatever can be accounted 

 for in Nature from mechanical caufes, is neceiTary, and, I think, well 

 accounted for. But their fyftem, as I already have obferved, is defec- 

 tive in thefe two capital points ; firft, that they do not fhow how- 

 motion fhould ever have begun in the univerfe ; nor, fecondly, how 

 fuch wonderful ends (hould have been accompliftied by fuch wonderful 

 means, without <any ends propofed, or means contrived j that is, in 

 one word, without intelligence. 



Before I conclude this chapter. It is proper-to obferve, that the terms 

 vecejfary and contingent^ (^vajv"*'*' ««' iy^izoi^^'o') ^^ much ufed, not only in 

 the books of both antient and modern philofophy, but in common dif- 

 CQurfe, are to be underftood in a fenfe very different from the necejfity 

 ,and chance of which I have been here treating ; for thefe have, as I 

 have fhown, a real exiftence in nature; whereas the other are only 

 relative to our knowledge and apprehenfion, and therefore belong not 



to 



intelligence from the univerfe, has been falfely imputed by fome modern philofophers ; 

 for, it is evident that ILpicurus's fyflem, as explained by Lucretius, is a fyftem of ma- 

 terialifm, accounting for the produdlion of every thing from the powers of the differ- 

 ent particles of matter, of various fizcs and figures, impelling one another, fometimes 

 joining together, fometimes feparating, and, in that way, exhibiting all the different 

 forms and motions we fee in the univerfe. Neither does he fay, that the motion of 

 the atomSj which was the caufe of all thefe various impulfes, concretions, and fecre- 

 tions, was produced by chance : But he tells us, that the atoms, by their gravity, 

 fall downwards, and, having got a fmall oblique inclination, (parvum clinamen ■prin~ 

 cipioruTn, as Lucretius calls it,^ he does not fay by chance, though he does not tell us 

 how, they meet and juftle, and produce all the effedls above mentioned. And, fo far 

 .is chance from being predominant in Epicurus's fyftem, that it was abfolutely exclu- 

 ded in all natural events ; for, as there was no diftintlion, according to him, or end 

 propofed, in any of the operations of Nature, nothing could happen bejides that endj 

 that is, nothing could happen by chance- 



