Chapter 31 - Page 2

necessity."

"Do you take me, then, for a fool, and a Fatalist? Pardie! a bad creed
for a monarch, the distributor of rewards and punishments."

"Right there, my lord. But, for all that, your highness is a
Necessitarian, yet no Fatalist. Confound not the distinct. Fatalism
presumes express and irrevocable edicts of heaven concerning
particular events. Whereas, Necessity holds that all events are
naturally linked, and inevitably follow each other, without
providential interposition, though by the eternal letting of
Providence."

"Well, well, Babbalanja, I grant it all. Go on."

"On high authority, we are told that in times past the fall of certain
nations in Mardi was prophesied of seers."

"Most true, my lord," said Mohi; "it is all down in the chronicles."

"Ha! ha!" cried Media. "Go on, philosopher."

Continued Babbalanja, "Previous to the time assigned to their
fulfillment, those prophecies were bruited through Mardi; hence,
previous to the time assigned to their fulfillment, full knowledge of
them may have come to the nations concerned. Now, my lord, was it
possible for those nations, thus forwarned, so to conduct their
affairs, as at, the prophesied time, to prove false the events
revealed to be in store for them?"

"However that may be," said Mohi, "certain it is, those events did
assuredly come to pass:--Compare the ruins of Babbelona with book
ninth, chapter tenth, of the chronicles. Yea, yea, the owl inhabits
where the seers predicted; the jackals yell in the tombs of the
kings."

"Go on, Babbalanja," said Media. "Of course those nations could not
have resisted their doom. Go on, then: vault over your premises."

"If it be, then, my lord, that--"

"My very worshipful lord," interposed Mohi, "is not our philosopher
getting off soundings; and may it not be impious to meddle with these
things?"

"Were it so, old man, he should have known it. The king of Odo is
something more than you mortals."

"But are we the great gods themselves," cried Yoomy, "that we
discourse of these things."

"No, minstrel," said Babbalanja; "and no need have the great gods to
discourse of things perfectly comprehended by them, and by themselves
ordained. But you and I, Yoomy, are men, and not gods; hence is it for
us, and not for them, to take these things for our themes. Nor is
there any impiety in the right use of our reason, whatever the issue.
Smote with superstition, shall we let it wither and die out, a dead,
limb to a live trunk, as the mad devotee's arm