[23]
"But what? You ask, Carneades, do you, why
these things so happen, or by what rules they may
be understood? I confess that I do not know,
but that they do so fall out I assert that you yourself see. ' Mere accidents,' you say. Now, really,
is that so? Can anything be an 'accident' which
bears upon itself every mark of truth? Four dice
are cast and a Venus throw1 results—that is chance;
[p. 251]
but do you think it would be chance, too, if in one
hundred casts you made one hundred Venus throws?
It is possible for paints flung at random on a canvas to
form the outlines of a face; but do you imagine that
an accidental scattering of pigments could produce
the beautiful portrait of Venus of Cos2 ? Suppose
that a hog should form the letter' A' on the ground
with its snout; is that a reason for believing that it
could write out Ennius's poem The Andromache?
"Carneades used to have a story that once in
the Chian quarries when a stone was split open
there appeared the head of the infant god Pan;
I grant that the figure may have borne some resemblance to the god, but assuredly the resemblance
was not such that you could ascribe the work to a
Scopas. For it is undeniably true that no perfect
imitation of a thing was ever made by chance.
Cicero: De Senectute De Amicitia De Divinatione. With An English Translation. William Armistead Falconer. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1923.
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