Having said thus, she began to turn her speech to treat and explicate
certain other questions, when I interrupted her, saying: "Thy
exhortation is very good, and well-seeming thy authority. But I find it
true by experience, as thou affirmedst, that the question of Providence
is entangled with many other. For I desire to know whether thou thinkest
chance to be anything at all, and what it is." "I make haste," quoth
she, "to perform my promise, and to show thee the way by which thou
mayest return to thy country. But these other questions, though they be
very profitable, yet they are somewhat from our purpose, and it is to be
feared lest being wearied with digressions thou beest not able to finish
thy direct journey." "There is no fear of that," quoth I, "for it will
be a great ease to me to understand those things in which I take great
delight, and withal, when thy disputation is fenced in on every side
with sure conviction, there can be no doubt made of anything thou shalt
infer." "I will," quoth she, "do as thou wouldst me have," and withal
began in this manner. "If any shall define chance to be an event
produced by a confused motion, and without connexion of causes, I affirm
that there is no such thing, and that chance is only an empty voice that
hath beneath it no real signification. For what place can confusion
have, since God disposeth all things in due order? For it is a true
sentence that of nothing cometh nothing, which none of the ancients
denied, though they held not that principle of the efficient cause, but
of the material subject, laying it down as in a manner the ground of all
their reasonings concerning nature. But if anything proceedeth from no
causes, that will seem to have come from nothing, which if it cannot be,
neither is it possible there should be any such chance as is defined a
little before." "What then," quoth I, "is there nothing that can rightly
be called chance or fortune? Or is there something, though unknown to
the common sort, to which these names agree?" "My Aristotle," quoth she,
"in his _Books of Nature_[166] declared this point briefly and very
near the truth." "How?" quoth I. "When," quoth she, "anything is done
for some certain cause, and some other thing happeneth for other reasons
than that which was intended, this is called chance; as if one digging
his ground with intention to till it, findeth an hidden treasure. This
is thought to have fallen thus out by fortune, but it is not of nothing,
for it hath peculiar causes whose unexpected and not foreseen concourse
seemeth to have brought forth a chance. For unless the husbandman had
digged up his ground, and unless the other had hidden his money in that
place, the treasure had not been found. These are therefore the causes
of this fortunate accident, which proceedeth from the meeting and
concourse of causes, and not from the intention of the doer. For neither
he that hid the gold nor he that tilled his ground had any intention
that the money should be found, but, as I said, it followed and
concurred that this man should dig up in the place where the other hid.
Wherefore, we may define chance thus: That it is an unexpected event of
concurring causes in those things which are done to some end and
purpose. Now the cause why causes so concur and meet so together, is
that order proceeding with inevitable connexion, which, descending from
the fountain of Providence, disposeth all things in their places and
times.
[166] _Phys._ ii. 4.