Chap. 6.] 
ACCOTOT or THE WOELD. 
25 
cannot do everything. For lie cannot procure deatli for 
himself, even if lie wished it, which, so numerous are the 
evils of life, has been granted to man as our chief good. Nor 
can he make mortals immortal, or recall to life those who 
are dead ; nor can he eifect, that he who has once lived shall 
not have lived, or that he who has enjoyed honours shall not 
have enjoyed them ; nor has he any influence over past 
events but to cause them to be forgotten. And, if we illus- 
trate the nature of our connexion with Grod by a less serious 
argument, he cannot make twice ten not to be twenty, and 
many other things of this kind. By these considerations the 
power of ISTature is clearly proved, and is shown to be what 
we call Grod. It is not foreign to the subject to have di- 
gressed into these matters, familiar as they are to every one, 
from the continual discussions that take place respecting 
QodK 
CHAP. 6. (8.) — OF THE l^ATUEE OP THE STAES ; OE THE 
M0TI0I3" OE THE PLAIS^ETS. 
Let us return from this digression to the other parts 
of nature. The stars which are described as fixed in the 
heavens^, are not, as the vulgar suppose, attached each of 
them to different individuals^, the brighter to the rich, those 
that are less so to the poor, and the dim to the aged, shining 
according to the lot of the individual, and separately assigned 
to mortals ; for they have neither come into existence, nor 
^ It is scarcely necessary to remark, that the opinions here stated re- 
specting the Deity are taken partly from the tenets of the Epicureans, 
combined with the Stoical doctrine of Fate. The examples which are ad- 
duced to prove the power of fate over the Deity are, for the most part, 
rather verbal than essential. 
2 " affixa mundo." The peculiar use of the word mundus in this pas- 
sage is worthy of remark, in connexion with note ^, ch. 1. page 13. 
3 We have many references in Phny to the influence of the stars upon 
the earth and its inhabitants, constituting what was formerly regarded as 
so important a science, judicial astrology. Ptolemy has drawn up a 
regular code of it in his " Centum dicta," or " Centiloquium.s." We 
have a higlily interesting account of the supposed science, its origin, pro- 
gress, and general principles, in Whewell's History of the Inductive Sci- 
ences, p. 293 et seq. I may also refer to the same work for a sketch of 
the history of astronomy among the Greeks and the other nations of 
antiquity. 
