Of God and His Creatures

These are three technical terms of Aristotelian philosophy. They refer to the category of coexistence, or coincidence, not to sequence. They are explained by Aristotle, Physics, II, iv, v, vi:

He tells us (l.c., vi): "Matter of luck is all matter of chance, but not all the latter is matter of luck. . . . No inanimate thing, nor beast, nor child, ever does anything by luck, because it is incapable of deliberate choice. . . . In things done for an end, when the action of some external cause was not done to bring about what actually happened, we may say that the thing happened by chance: but those things happen by luck, which happen by chance, and at the same time rank as objects of choice to persons having the faculty of choice."


Of God and His Creatures: 3.5