[19]
"But if you deny the existence of chance and
assert that the course of everything present or
future has been inevitably determined from all
eternity, then you must change your definition of
divination, which you said was 'the foreknowledge
of things that happen by chance.' For if nothing
can happen, nothing befall, nothing come to pass,
except what has been determined from all eternity as
bound to happen at a fixed time, how can there be
such a thing as chance? And if there is no such
thing as chance, what room is there for that divination, which you termed 'a foreknowledge of things
that happen by chance'? And you were inconsistent enough, too, to say that everything that is
or will be is controlled by Fate!1 Why, the very
word ' Fate ' is full of superstition and old women's
credulity, and yet the Stoics have much to say of
this Fate of yours. A discussion on Fate2 is reserved
for another occasion; at present I shall speak of
it only in so far as it is necessary.
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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