nevertheless, one man's course of life turns out immeasurably happier,
nobler and more worthy than another's, whether it be regarded from a
subjective or an objective point of view, and unless we are to exclude
all ideas of justice, we are led to the doctrine which is well
accepted in Brahmanism and Buddhism, that the subjective conditions in
which, as well as the objective conditions under which, every man is
born, are the moral consequences of a previous existence.

Macchiavelli, who seems to have taken no interest whatever in
philosophical speculations, is drawn by the keen subtlety of his very
unique understanding into the following observation, which possesses
a really deep meaning. It shows that he had an intuitive knowledge of
the entire necessity with which, characters and motives being given,
all actions take place. He makes it at the beginning of the prologue
to his comedy _Clitia_. _If_, he says, _the same men were to recur
in the world in the way that the same circumstances recur, a hundred
years would never elapse without our finding ourselves together once
more, and doing the same things as we are doing now--Se nel mondo
tornassino i medesimi uomini, como tornano i medesimi casi, non
passarebbono mai cento anni che noi non ci trovassimo un altra volta
insieme, a fare le medesime cose che hora_. He seems however to have
been drawn into the remark by a reminiscence of what Augustine says in
his _De Civitate Dei_, bk. xii., ch. xiii.

Again, Fate, or the [Greek: eimarmenae] of the ancients, is nothing
but the conscious certainty that all that happens is fast bound by a
chain of causes, and therefore takes place with a strict necessity;
that the future is already ordained with absolute certainty and can
undergo as little alteration as the past. In the fatalistic myths of
the ancients all that can be regarded as fabulous is the prediction
of the future; that is, if we refuse to consider the possibility of
magnetic clairvoyance and second sight. Instead of trying to explain
away the fundamental truth of Fatalism by superficial twaddle and
foolish evasion, a man should attempt to get a clear knowledge and
comprehension of it; for it is demonstrably true, and it helps us in a
very important way to an understanding of the mysterious riddle of
our life. Predestination and Fatalism do not differ in the main. They
differ only in this, that with Predestination the given character and
external determination of human