102 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [BOOK H, 



open air ; but the Parcw of the Destinies in a large sub 

 terraneous cave, from which they emerged with inconceivable 

 swiftness, to operate on mankind, because the common face of 

 the universe is open ; but the individual fates, dark, swift, and 

 sudden. The analogy will also correspond if fate be enlarged 

 above its ordinary acceptation as applicable to inanimate 

 nature. Since, also, in that order nothing passes without a 

 cause, and nothing is so absolutely great as to be indepen 

 dent, nature holding in her lap and bosom every event either 

 small or great, and disclosing them in due season, it is, 

 therefore, no marvel that the Parcse are introduced as the 

 sisters of Pan : for Fortune is the daughter of the foolish 

 vulgar, and finds favour only with the more unsound philo 

 sophers. And the words of Epicurus savour less of dotage 

 than profanity &quot; Prsestare credere fabulam Deorum quam 

 fatum asserere 1 as if anything in the frame of nature could, 

 like an island, stand apart from the rest. But Epicurus 

 framed his natural philosophy on his moral, and would heat 

 of no opinion which might press or sting his conscience, or 

 in any way trouble that euthymia or tranquillity of mind 

 which he had received from Democritus. Hence, being 

 more indulgent to his own fancies than patient of truth, he 

 fairly cast off the yoke, and abandoned as well the necessity 

 of fate as the fear of the gods. 



Horns are given him broad at the roots, but narrow and 

 sharp a-top, because the nature of all things seems pyra 

 midal : for individuals are infinite ; but being collected into 

 a variety of species, they rise up into kinds ; and these again 

 ascend, and are contracted into generals, till at length nature 

 may seem collected to a point, which is signified by the 

 pyramidal figure of Pan s horns. And no wonder if Pan s 

 horns reach to the heavens, since the sublimities of nature, 

 or abstract ideas, reach in a manner to things divine. Thus 

 Homer s famous chain of natural causes is tied to the foot of 

 Jupiter s chain j 1 and indeed no one can treat of metaphysics, 

 or of the internal and immutable in nature, without rushing 

 at once into natural theology. 



Pan s body, or the body of nature, is, with great propriety 

 and elegance, painted shaggy and hairy, as representing the 



* Seneca s Epistle* Iliad, ix. 



