Un peccatore, a guisa di maciulla,
Si che tre ne facea così dolenti.
A quel dinanzi il mordere era nulla,
Verso 'l graffiar, chè tal volta la schiena
Rimanea della pelle tutta brulla"—
is quite in harmony with the Pisan picture and perfectly Polynesian in conception.
[61] See the famous Collection of Papers, published by Clarke in 1717. Leibnitz says: "'Tis also a supernatural thing that bodies should attract one another at a distance without any intermediate means." And Clarke, on behalf of Newton, caps this as follows: "That one body should attract another without any intermediate means is, indeed, not a miracle, but a contradiction; for 'tis supposing something to act where it is not."
[62] I may cite in support of this obvious conclusion of sound reasoning, two authorities who will certainly not be regarded lightly by Mr. Lilly. These are Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. The former declares that "Fate" is only an ill-chosen name for Providence.
"Prorsus divina providentia regna constituuntur humana. Quæ si propterea quisquam fato tribuit, quia ipsam Dei voluntatem vel potestatem fati nomine appellat, sententiam teneat, linguam corrigat" (Augustinus De Civitate Dei, V. c. i.)
The other great doctor of the Catholic Church, "Divus Thomas," as Suarez calls him, whose marvellous grasp and subtlety of intellect seem to me to be almost without a parallel, puts the whole case into a nutshell, when he says that the ground for doing a thing in the mind of the doer is as it were the pre-existence of the thing done: