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. As with spontaneity, so with chance;
for this also produces the same result as art, and by the same
process.
The fittest mode, then, of treatment is to say, a man has such and
such parts, because the conception of a man includes their presence,
and because they are necessary conditions of his existence, or, if
we cannot quite say this, which would be best of all, then the next
thing to it, namely, that it is either quite impossible for him to
exist without them, or, at any rate, that it is better for him that
they should be there; and their existence involves the existence of
other antecedents. Thus we should say, because man is an animal with
such and such characters, therefore is the process of his
development necessarily such as it is; and therefore is it
accomplished in such and such an order, this part being formed
first, that next, and so on in succession; and after a like fashion
should we explain the evolution of all other works of nature.
Now that with which the ancient writers, who first philosophized
about Nature, busied themselves, was the material principle and the
material cause. They inquired what this is, and what its character;
how the universe is generated out of it, and by what motor
influence, whether, for instance, by antagonism or friendship, whether
by intelligence or spontaneous action, the substratum of matter
being assumed to have certain inseparable properties; fire, for
instance, to have a hot nature, earth a cold one; the former to be
light, the latter heavy
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