When these men and the principles of this kind had had their day as the latter were found inadequate to generate the nature of things men were again forced by the truth itself as we said to inquire into the next kind of cause. For it is not likely either that fire or earth or any such element should be the reason why things manifest goodness and beauty both in their being and in their coming to be or that those thinkers should have supposed it was; nor again could it be right to entrust so great a matter to spontaneity and chance. When one man said then that reason was present as in animals so throughout nature as the cause of order and of all arrangement he seemed like a sober man in contrast with the random talk of his predecessors.