“It is Nature,” you say, “who supplies me with these things.” But do you not understand that, when you say this, you merely give another name to to God? For what else is Nature but God and the Divine Reason that pervades the whole cosmos and all its parts? You may, as often as you like, address this being who is the author of this world of ours by different names; it will be right for you to call him Jupiter Best and Greatest, and the Thunderer and the Stayer, a title derived, not from the fact that, as the historians have related, the Roman battle-line stayed its flight in answer to prayer,6 but from the fact that all things are stayed by his benefits, that he is their Stayer and Stabilizer. If likewise you should call him Fate, it would be no falsehood; for, since Fate is nothing but a connected chain of causes, he is the first of all the causes on which the others depend. Any name that you choose will be properly applied to him if it connotes some force that operates in the domain of heaven — his titles may be as countless as are his benefits.