FATE, GOOD, AND EVIL; the relation of power to goodness, and the origin and nature of evil: here is a group of fundamental ideas and problems that challenges inquiry, even if it defies any complete answer. The Greek word Moira, with its fringe of associations, comes perhaps nearer than any other single word to suggesting this group of ideas, and may serve as a title for such an inquiry.

The present study began a number of years ago when I attempted to interpret, so far as I was able, various works in Greek literature, both in poetry and in prose, which express these ideas. Naturally I found that one problem leads to another, so that eventually I must consider most of the literature of the classical period; indeed, since it proved impossible to set any arbitrary limit in antiquity, I felt free to follow single threads of Greek thought as far as Milton. In the course of my investigations I have profited by reading a multitude of works by modern scholars, as will appear from a glance at the footnotes; in the Select Bibliography I have indicated a few of the works that have seemed to me most valuable or that bear most directly on phases of the general problem. But since I could find no single work that undertakes to deal with the group of questions that confronted me, what I have set down for my own enlightenment may prove helpful also to others.