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Yet on the whole, as one might expect, the believers in Destiny are a more respectable congregation than the worshippers of Chance. It requires a certain amount of thoughtfulness to rise to the conception that nothing really happens without a cause. It is the beginning, perhaps, of science. Ionic philosophers of the fifth century had laid stress on the Ἀνάγκη φύσιος,[134:1] what we should call the Chain of causes in Nature. After the rise of Stoicism Fate becomes something less physical, more related to conscious purpose. It is not Anankê but Heimarmenê. Heimarmenê, in the striking simile of Zeno,[134:2] is like a fine thread running through the whole of existence the world, we must remember, was to the Stoics a live thing like that invisible thread of life which, in heredity, passes on from generation to generation of living species and keeps the type alive; it runs causing, causing for ever, both the infinitesimal and the infinite. It is the Λόγος τοῦ Κόσμου,[135:1] the Νοῦς Διός, the Reason of the World or the mind of Zeus, rather difficult to distinguish from the Pronoia or Providence which is the work of God and indeed the very essence of God. Thus it is not really an external and alien force. For the human soul itself is a fragment or effluence of the divine, and this Law of God is also the law of man's own Phusis. As long as you act in accordance with your true self you are complying with that divine Εἱμαρμένη or
By an earlier forecast in each case he would be more able to tend those aright who have a chance of surviving, and by foreseeing and stating who will die, and who will survive, he will escape blame.... Pronoia in Hippocrates means knowing things about a patient before you are told them. Prognostics 1.
The most obvious feature, the outstanding element that at once strikes the modern observer in these 'Coan' writings, is the enormous emphasis laid on the actual course of disease. 'It appears to me a most excellent thing', so opens one of the greatest of the Hippocratic works, 'for a physician to cultivate pronoia.
'Illegible' is applied to the handwriting, 'unreadable' to the subject-matter written; a man writes an 'illegible' hand; he has published an 'unreadable' book. 'Foresight' is ascribed to men, but' providence' for the most part designates, as pronoia also came to do, the far-looking wisdom of God, by which He governs and graciously cares for his people.
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