Moral essays. With an English translation by J.W. Basore

ON PROVIDENCE, i. 2-4on unhindered, producing so many things on landand sea, so many brilhant Ughts in the sky all shiningin fixed array ; that this regularity does not belongto matter moving at random, and that whatevercombinations result from chance do not adjust themselveswith that artistry whereby the earth, theheaviest in weight, abides immovable and beholdsthe flight of the sky as it wliirls around it, and theseas, flooding vths spring up from the tiniest seeds. Even thosephenomena which seem irregular and undetermined—I mean showers and clouds, the stroke of crashingthunderbolts and the fires that belch from the rivenpeaks of mountains, tremors of the quaking ground,and the other disturbances wliich the turbulent elementin nature sets in motion about the earth, these,no matter how suddenly they occur, do not happenwithout a reason ; nay, they also are the result ofspecial causes, and so, in like manner, are thosethings which seem miraculous by reason of the incongruoussituations in which they are beheld, suchas warm waters in the midst of the sea-waves, andthe expanses of new islands that spring up in thewide ocean. Moreover, if any one observes how theshore is laid bare as the sea withdraws into itself,and how within a short time the same stretch iscovered over again, he will suppose that it is someblind fluctuation which causes the waves now toshrink and flow inwards, now to burst forth and inmighty sweep seek their former resting-place,whereas in fact they increase by degrees, and trueto the hour and the day they approach in proper-