To be honest, I would also understand it that way in a work like de divinatione, which is concerned with the prevision of the future, not the rational logic of cause and effect. Causa can also point to the purpose/reason for which something is done, and that's how I'd understand it here. The meaning range of causa is wider than merely "cause" as in "scientific cause and effect". Still, I don't see the need to question a well-established proverb that is essentially the basis for this English phrase. I actually believe the post in the frequently asked translations could do with some updates as the translations offered here are much better than the primitive suggestions in the other threads. Incidentally, this has been asked before a couple of times: POST: #26077 Maybe we could just cut through all the coyness and say: nihil fit nisi ex causa quasi divina = nothing happens unless from a sort-of-divine cause. But I do think that Bitmap's version, elegantly simple as it is, is not getting under the surface. There's probably some really simple way of doing this. But now the sentence is getting quite long. And am tempted to put 'in vita' ( nihil in vita accidit = nothing happens in life)to get a proper context. Oh dear, reading that back I'm still not getting the sense of a divine or otherwise supra-human agency. nihil accidit nisi quodam ex proposito= nothing happens unless from some purpose It might be better to stick a quodam in there, to show that you don't exactly know what the purpose is - it's "a purpose", not "the purpose". Or pursuing a different idea: nihil accidit nisi ex proposito = nothing happens unless from a set purpose. nihil accidit nisi consulto forte nihil, omnia consilio accidunt. Perhaps use accido instead: it still means 'happen', but more appropriate for just the way things turn out. My versions could read as if the bearer of the tattoo is saying that everything done by him is deliberate. Now that I look at it again, I wonder if 'fio' is after all the right way to go, since it often acts as the passive of facio. ![]() So I'm inclining towards something like: nihil fit nisi consulto = nothing happens unless on purpose forte nihil, omnia consilio fiunt = nothing happens by chance, everything by plan (or just the second half on its own) I've wondered about whether substituting 'ratione' for 'causa' would bring out this sense, since I think that 'ratio' (with its root in the idea of thinking, calculating, reasoning) is maybe less impersonal than 'causa', but I'm still not confident the difference would be felt. It's not just 'a reason', its' 'a REASON '. Surely the OP means 'everything happens according to some supernatural plan'. I would not be surprised to find a statement like this in Lucretius - an atheist materialist, who would be very much opposed to the sentiment that the OP is, I think, endorsing. Bitmap has given us a scientific truth, a logical axiom: effect follows cause, everything is explicable if you follow the chain of causality. I think doing the double negative thing works well here, better than a literal rendering.īut I don't think it's what the OP is looking for. ![]() Click to expand.= 'nothing happens without a reason'.
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