Justus Lipsius, On Constancy 1.17

We come to that necessity which is of destiny. First destiny itself avouched. That there has been a general consent therein of the common people and wise men; but different in part. How many ways destiny has been taken among the ancients.

Thus spoke Langius, and with his talk caused the tears to trickle down my cheeks; so clearly seemed he to behold the vanity of human affairs. 

With that lifting up my voice, "Alas," said I, "what are we or all these matters for which we thus toil? What is it to be somebody? Man is a shadow and a dream, as says the poet." 

Then spoke Langius to me, "But you, young man, do not only contemplate on these things, but condemn them. Imprint constancy in your mind amid this casual and inconstant variableness of all things. I call it inconstant in respect of our understanding and judgment; for that if you look unto God and his Providence, all things succeed in a steady and immovable order. 

"Now I cast aside my sword and come to my engines; neither will I any longer assault sorrow with handy weapons but with great ordnance, running against it with the strong and terrible ram which no power of man is able to put back nor policy to prevent. This place is somewhat slippery, yet I will enter into it, but warily, slowly, and, as the Grecians speak, with a quiet foot.

"And first that there is a kind of fatal destiny in things, I think neither yourself, Lipsius, nor any people or age has ever doubted of."

Here I interrupting him said, "I pray you pardon me if I hinder you a little in this course. What? Do you oppose destiny unto me? Alas, this is but a weak engine pushed on by the feeble Stoics. I tell you plainly I care not a rush for the destinies nor the ladies of them. And I say with the soldier in Plautus, I will scatter this troupe of old wives with one blast of breath, even as the wind does the leaves." 

Langius looking sternly on me, "Will you so rashly and unadvisedly," said he, "delude or deny utterly destiny? You are not able, except if you can at once take away the divine Godhead and the power thereof, for, if there be a God, there is also Providence; if it, a decree and order of things, and of that follows a firm and sure necessity of events. 

"How do you avoid this blow? Or with what axe will you cut off this chain? For God and that eternal spirit may not otherwise be considered of by us, than that we attribute unto it an eternal knowledge and foresight. We must acknowledge him to be stayed, resolute and immutable, always one, and like himself, not wavering or varying in those things which once he willed and foresaw. For the eternal God never changes his mind, says Homer. 

"Which if you confess to be true, as indeed you must if there be in you any reason or sense, this also must be allowed that all God's decrees are firm and immovable even from everlasting unto all eternity; of this grows necessity, and that same destiny which you deride. The truth whereof is so clear and commonly received, that there was never any opinion current among all nations. And whosoever had any light of God himself and his Providence, had the like of destiny. 

"The most ancient and wisest poet Homer, believe me, traced his divine muse in none other path than this of destiny. Neither did the other poets, his progeny, stray from the steps of their father. See Euripides, Sophocles, Pindar, and among the Latins Virgil. 

"Shall I speak of historiographers? This is the voice of them all, that such and such a thing came to pass by destiny, and that by destiny kingdoms are either established or subverted. 

"Would you hear the philosophers, whose chief care was to find out and defend the truth against the common people? As they jarred in many things through an ambitious desire of disputing, so it is a wonder to see how they agreed universally upon the entrance into this way which leads to destiny. 

"I say in the entrance of that way, because I do not deny that they follow some by pathways which may be reduced into these four kinds of destiny, namely, mathematical, natural, violent, and true. All of which I will expound briefly, only touching them a little, because from such matters commonly grows confusion and error." 

IMAGE: Alexander Rothaug, The Three Fates (c. 1910)