Chapter 31: On the necessity and contingency of things
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CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE.On the necessity and contingency of things.
NECESSITY is the influx of divine power giving things a mode by which they so are that they cannot be otherwise.For all call necessary that which cannot hold itself otherwise.And what cannot hold itself otherwise must so hold itself as it does.And what is so and cannot be otherwise is either from nowhere else — as God, the first and independent being, of whom we treated above — or is from the causes of things.
II.And it is either from the end, or from the agent, or from the idea, or from matter, or from form.
Latin
CAPUT TRICESIMUM PRIMUM, De necessitate et contingentia rerum. NECESSITAS est divinae potentiae influxus dans rebus modum, quo ita sunt ut aliter esse non possint. Omnes enim appellant necessarium id quod non potest aliter se habere. Quod autem non potest aliter se habere, id necesse est ita se habere ut habet. Quod autem sic est et non aliter esse potest, id vel non aliunde est, ut Deus, ens primum et independens, de quo supra vidimus, vel a causis rerum est. II. Est autem vel a fine, vel ab agente, vel ab idea, vel a materia, vel a forma.