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[246] So that his Lordship may no longer have any doubts about my meaning, what I say necessitates and determines every action is the totality of all things which now exist, and operate together in the subsequent production of that action, in such a way that, if any of them were now lacking, the effect could not be produced. This co-operation of causes (each one of which is determined to be such as it is by a similar co-operation of earlier causes) may well be called the decree of God, in that they were all established and organised by the eternal cause of all things, God Almighty.

But it is not correct to say that God’s foreknowledge is the cause of anything, since foreknowledge is knowledge, and knowledge depends on the things known, and not the other way round.

The influence of the stars is only a small part of the whole cause, which consists in the co-operation of all agents.

Nor does the co-operation of all causes consist in one simple chain or concatenation, but in an innumerable number of chains. They are not joined together at every point, [247] but they are in the first link, which is God Almighty. Consequently, the whole cause of an event does not always depend on one single chain, but on many together. . .

[266] In the rest of his book, his Lordship lists the opinions of various professions as to the causes which they think the necessity of things consists in. First, he says that astrologers derive their necessity from the stars, and second, that doctors attribute it to the state of the body. I disagree with them, because neither the stars alone, nor the state of the body alone, is able to produce any effect, without the co-operation of all other agents. For there is hardly any action, however due to chance it may seem, which is not caused by the co-operation of everything in Nature. However, I shall not press this point here, since it goes completely against received opinion, and depends on many earlier speculations. . . .

[277] Take, for example, the case of the weather. It is necessary that tomorrow it will rain, or it will not rain. Therefore, if it is not necessary that it will rain, it is necessary that it will not rain, otherwise the proposition that it will rain or not rain is not necessarily true. I know some people say that it can be necessary that one of the two will happen, without either of the alternatives being necessary (that it will rain, or that it will not rain). But this is equivalent to saying that one of them is necessary, yet neither of them is necessary. So in order to make it appear that they have avoided this absurdity, they make a distinction, and say that neither of them is true determinately, but they are true indeterminately. This distinction could merely mean that one of them is true, but we do not know which. If so, it is still necessarily true, even though we do not know that it is true. But if this is not what the distinction means, it has no meaning at all, and they might just as well have said that one of them is true gobblely, but neither of them is true degookily. [n.1]

[304] Similarly, when I say ‘There is hardly any action, however due to chance it may seem, which is not caused by the co-operation of everything in Nature,’ this seems to the Bishop to go entirely against received opinion. He would say it was no less paradoxical, if I said that all action is the effect of motion, and that there cannot be a motion in any part of the world without its being communicated to all the rest of the world. But suppose I used something smaller as an example — say a hollow sphere or a barrel – and said that, if it were filled with air or some other fluid, then the motion of any one little particle in it would cause a motion in all the rest. In that case, he would understand the truth of what I said (or if he wouldn’t, any intelligent reader would). But the size of the barrel is irrelevant to the issue, and therefore the same would be true if the whole world were the barrel. What prevents the Bishop from understanding is the enormous size of the barrel. But the truth is easy enough to understand, and I can say it without any ambition of being the founder of strange opinions. Someone who is merely learned might find it laughable, but someone who is wise as well as learned will not. . . . [n.2]

[406] As for the seventh point, that all events have necessary causes, I have proved it there, in that they have sufficient causes. Here I would add the following. Let us suppose an event which is as subject to chance as could be, for example, throwing a double ace with a pair of dice, and see if it must not have been necessary before it was thrown. For since it was thrown, it had a beginning, and consequently a cause which was sufficient to produce it. This cause consisted partly in the dice themselves, and partly in things external to them, such as the disposition [n.3] of the player’s hand, the amount of force applied by the dice-box, the disposition of the parts of the table, and so on. Taken together, nothing which was necessarily required for producing that particular throw was lacking; and consequently that throw was thrown necessarily. For if it had not been thrown, then something required for its being thrown would have been lacking; and so the cause would not have been sufficient. . . .

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