THE STOIC DETERMINISM IS BASED ON VARIOUS THEORIES.
Others (like the Stoic Chrysippus[103]) define Fate otherwise: it is "the concatenation of causes" in "their connection towards the infinite," by which every posterior fact is the consequence of an anterior one. Thus the things that follow relate to the things that precede, and, as their effects, necessarily depend thereupon. Amidst these (Stoic) philosophers there are two conceptions of Fate: some consider that everything depends from a single principle, while others do not. These views we shall study later.
We shall first examine the system with which we began; later we shall review the others.
3. To refer everything to physical causes, whether you call them atoms or elements, and from their disordered motion to deduce order, reason and the soul that directs (the body), is absurd and impossible; nevertheless, to deduce everything from atoms, is, if possible, still more impossible; and consequently many valid objections have been raised against this theory.
THE STOIC POLEMIC AGAINST THE EPICUREANS.
To begin with, even if we do admit such atomic principles, their existence does not in any way inevitably lead to either the necessity of all things, or fatality. Let us, indeed, grant the existence of atoms; now some will move downwards--that is, if there is an up and down in the universe--others obliquely, by chance, in various directions. As there will be no order, there will be nothing determinate. Only what will be born of the atoms will be determinate. It will therefore be impossible to guess or predict events, whether by art--and indeed, how could there be any art in the midst of orderless things?--or by enthusiasm, or divine inspiration; for prediction implies that the future is determined. True, bodies will obey the impulses necessarily communicated to them by the atoms; but how could you explain the operations and affections of the soul by movements of atoms? How could atomic shock, whether vertical or oblique, produce in the soul these our reasonings, or appetites, whether necessarily, or in any other way? What explanation could they give of the soul's resistance to the impulsions of the body? By what concourse of atoms will one man become a geometrician, another become a mathematician and astronomer, and the other a philosopher? For, according to that doctrine we no longer produce any act for which we are responsible, we are even no longer living beings, since we undergo the impulsion of bodies that affect us just as they do inanimate things.