SVF II.974

Original — Latin

Chrysippus autem cum et necessitatem improbaret et nihil vellet sine praepositis causis evenire, causarum genera distinguit, ut et necessitatem effugiat et retineat fatum. “Causarum enim”, inquit, “aliae sunt perfectae et principales, aliae adiuvantes et proximae. Quam ob rem, cum dicimus omnia fato fieri causis antecedentibus, non hoc intellegi volumus: causis perfectis et principalibus, sed causis adiuvantibus et proximis.” — “Ut igitur”, inquit, “qui protrusit cylindrum, dedit ei principium motionis, volubilitatem autem non dedit, sic visum obiectum imprimet illud quidem et quasi signabit in animo suam speciem, sed adsensio nostra erit in potestate, eaque, quem ad modum in cylindro dictum est, extrinsecus pulsa, quod reliquum est, suapte vi et natura movebitur.”

StoicOs Translation

But Chrysippus, since he both rejected necessity and wanted nothing to happen without prior causes, distinguishes kinds of causes, so as to escape necessity and yet retain fate. 'Of causes,' he says, 'some are perfect and principal, others auxiliary and proximate. Therefore when we say that all things happen by fate through antecedent causes, we do not mean perfect and principal causes, but auxiliary and proximate ones.' — 'As, then,' he says, 'he who pushed the cylinder gave it the beginning of its motion but did not give it its rollability, so an encountered impression will indeed imprint and as it were stamp its form on the mind; but assent will be in our power, and — as was said of the cylinder — though pushed from without, for the rest it will move by its own force and nature.'

Context

Cicero's De fato stages the Hellenistic debate on determinism; he presents Chrysippus as an 'honorary arbiter' seeking the middle between hard necessity and uncaused freedom — and preserves, in Latin, his most famous argument.

Source notes:Text verified against von Arnim, SVF II (1903), no. 974, pp. 282–283 (OCR of the scanned edition). Excerpted: the distinction of causes (§41) and the cylinder comparison (§43); Cicero marks Chrysippus' words with 'inquit'. The full passage runs De fato 39–44.

What the source actually tells us

Latin paraphrase with embedded near-quotations ('inquit'); Gellius (SVF II.1000) independently transmits the same cylinder comparison with Greek wording, which secures the analogy as genuinely Chrysippean, from On Providence.

Philosophical meaning

The push is fate's; the rolling is the cylinder's. An impression strikes from outside, but how we respond flows from our own shape — our assent. Responsibility survives determinism because what we are is itself a cause: the decisive move in every later debate about freedom within fate.

Scholarly uncertainty

Cicero translates and abridges for a Roman polemic; the Latin cause-terminology (perfectae/principales, adiuvantes/proximae) renders Greek terms whose exact form is debated. Which book Cicero used is not stated.

Go deeper

• Read SVF II.1000 — the cylinder in Gellius, with Chrysippus' Greek →
• Read SVF II.913 — Chrysippus' definitions of fate →
• Read SVF II.54 — what an impression is →