STOICAL FATE, or FATALITY, or FATALISM, is defined by Cicero, an order or series of causes, in which cause is linked to cause, each producing others; and in this manner all things flow from the one prime cause. Chrysippus defines it a natural invariable succession of all things, _ab eterno_, each involving the other. To this fate they subject the very gods themselves. Thus the poet observes, that the “parent of all things made laws at the beginning, by which he not only binds other things, but himself.” Seneca also remarks, _Eadem necessitas et deos alligat. Irrevocabilis divina pariter et humana cursit vehit. Ipse ille omnium conditor et rector scripsit quidam fata, sed sequitur; semel scripsit, semper paret._ This eternal series of causes, the poets call μοιραι, and _parcæ_, or destinies. By some later authors Fate is divided into _Physical_ and _divine_. The first, or Physical fate, is an order and series of physical causes, appropriated to their effects. This series is necessary, and the necessity is natural. The principal or foundation of this Fate is nature, or the power and manner of acting which God originally gave to the several bodies, elements, &c. By this Fate it is that fire warms; bodies communicate motion to each other; the rising and falling of the tides, &c. And the effects of this Fate are all the events and phenomena in the universe, except such as arise from the human. The second, or divine Fate, is what is more commonly called Providence. Plato, in his Phædo, includes both these in one definition; as intimating, that they were one and the same thing, actively and passively considered. Thus, Fatum _Est ratio quædam divina, lexque naturæ comes, quæ transiri nequeat, quippe a causa pendens, quæ superior sit quibusvis impedimentis_. Though that of Bœtius seems the clearer of the two:—_Fatum_, says he, _est inhærens rebus molilibus despositio per quam providentia suis quæque nectet ordinibus_. PHYSIOGNOMY[37], ΦΥΣΙΟΓΝΩΜΙΑ.