ÉPINOMIS.

cessity that dominates an intelligent soul is the strongest of all necessities, since it is by its own laws and not those of another that such a soul governs; and when, taking counsel from an excellent intelligence, it determines itself toward what is best, then what it has willed is executed irrevocably according to the decisions of its intelligence: even the diamond has no more solidity or consistency, and one can say with truth that the three Fates The Moirai, who weave the thread of destiny. maintain and guarantee the perfect execution of what each of the gods has resolved after the wisest deliberation. From which it follows that men ought to consider as a sign of the intelligence that animates the stars and presides over all celestial revolutions the constancy with which their movements are executed, because ancient decrees have determined them since a time almost infinite, and do not permit them the slightest change either in direction or in the order of their march. Quite the contrary, some men, in seeing the stars always do the same things and in the same manner, have believed by that very fact that the stars had no soul. The multitude has followed these foolish people, in such a way that it has attached reason and life to what is human because it moves as it pleases, and it has deprived of intelligence that which is divine because it always persists in the same movement. It was permitted to man to rise to a conception more beautiful, more just, and more agreeable to the gods, and to understand that what must be recognized as endowed with intelligence is precisely that which always does the same things, following the same rules, in the same manner. Such are the stars, so beautiful to see, and whose march and harmonious movements surpass all choirs in majesty and magnificence, while they satisfy at the same time the needs of