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Tu vero felix, Agricola, non vitae tantum claritate, sed etiam opportunitate mortis. Ut perhibent qui interfuerunt novissimis sermonibus tuis, constans et libens fatum excepisti; tanquam pro virili portione innocentiam principi donares.

This is the mechanical side of the insect, the fatum, the only thing which is able to explain the monstrous illogicality of a Pelopaeus when misled by my artifices. Is the Lamb when it first grips the teat a free and conscious agent, capable of improvement in its difficult art of taking nourishment?

I did not divest myself of pride, but it became more tractable and more convenient; it renounced ostentation and vain display; the peacock changed into a man of good breeding. This, sir, is what experience has done for me, assisted by Sequere fatum. It has made me wise, an honest man and an atheist.

As I pronounced this conviction, the four persons present looked at each other and then at me, in wonder and defiance, but without a word. For a moment a chilly presentiment crept over me a shadowy warning that the declaration I had just made would prove the fatum of my life. As a physician, I had given very much attention to disturbances of the mind; nervous distractions, diseases of the brain.

In which respect these philosophers were not far removed from the teaching of our Lord, who deprecates these anxieties in regard to the morrow, comparing them with the needless trouble a man would give himself in labouring to increase his stature. And that is what may be called Fatum Christianum.

This necessity, supposedly existent in events, and detached from their causes, might be termed Fatum Mahometanum, as I have already observed above, because a similar line of reasoning, so it is said, causes the Turks not to shun places ravaged by plague.

The libretto was written by Ostrowsky, one of the celebrated dramatists of the day. The first performance took place on January 30, 1869. We are told it had several performances and considerable popular success. But the composer was dissatisfied with its failure to win a great artistic success, and burnt the score. He did the same with his next work, an orchestral fantaisie, entitled "Fatum."

Determinism was accepted by both schools but with a difference. To the Stoic, fatum is a synonym of Providence whose popular name is Zeus. The Epicurean also accepts fatum as governing the universe, but it is not teleological, and Zeus is not identified with it but is, like man, subordinated to it. Again, the Stoic is consistently fatalistic.

For what is called Fatum Stoicum was not so black as it is painted: it did not divert men from the care of their affairs, but it tended to give them tranquillity in regard to events, through the consideration of necessity, which renders our anxieties and our vexations needless.

I have just shown how the action of the will depends upon its causes; that there is nothing so appropriate to human nature as this dependence of our actions; and that otherwise one would slip into a preposterous and unendurable fatality, namely into the Fatum Mahometanum, which is the worst of all because it overthrows foresight and good counsel.