PROXIMATE CAUSES ARE UNSATISFACTORY; WE MUST SEEK THE ULTIMATE ONES.
2. To stop, on arriving at these causes, and to refuse further analysis, is to exhibit superficiality. This is against the advice of the sages, who advise ascending to the primary causes, to the supreme principles. For example, why, during the full moon, should the one man steal, and the other one not steal? Or, why, under the same influence of the heavens, has the one, and not the other, been sick? Why, by use of the same means, has the one become rich, and the other poor? The difference of dispositions, characters, and fortunes force us to seek ulterior causes, as indeed the sages have always done.
Those sages who (like Leucippus, Democritus and Epicurus) assumed material principles such as the atoms, and who explain everything by their motion, their shock and combinations, pretend that everything existent and occurring is caused by the agency of these atoms, their "actions and reactions." This includes, according to them, our appetites and dispositions. The necessity residing in the nature of these principles, and in their effects, is therefore, by these sages, extended to everything that exists. As to the (Ionic Hylicists), who assume other physical (ultimate) principles, referring everything to them, they thus also subject all beings to necessity.
HERACLITUS, THOUGH MORE SPIRITUAL, IS ALSO DETERMINIST.
There are others (such as Heraclitus[102]), who, seeking the (supreme) principle of the universe, refer everything to it; saying that this principle penetrates, moves, and produces everything. This they call Fate, and the Supreme Cause. From it they derive everything; its motions are said to give rise not only to the things that are occurring, but even our thought. That is how the members of an animal do not move themselves, but receive the stimulus from the "governing principle" within them.
THE ASTROLOGERS MAKE COSMIC DEDUCTIONS FROM PROGNOSTICATION.
Some (of the astrologers) explain everything by the circular motion of the heavens, by the relative positions of the planets and stars, and by their mutual aspects (or, relations). They base this (principle) on the prevalent habit of deducing therefrom conjectures about futurity.