Otherwise, if there is no necessity, then foreknowledge will not be a sign of that which does not exist.Now it is allowed that proof rests upon firm reasoning, not upon signs or external arguments; it must be deduced from suitable and binding causes.How can it possibly be that things, which are foreseen as about to happen, should not occur? That would be as though we were to believe that events would not occur which Providence foreknows as about to occur, and as though we did not rather think this, that though they occur, yet they have had no necessity in their own natures which brought them about.We can see many actions developing before our eyes; just as chariot drivers see the development of their actions as they control and guide their chariots, and many other things likewise.Does any necessity compel any of those things Page 153to occur as they do? Of course not.All art, craft, and intention would be in vain, if everything took place by compulsion.Therefore, if things have no necessity for coming to pass when they do, they cannot have any necessity to be about to come to pass before they do.Wherefore there are things whose results are entirely free from necessity.For I think not that there is any man who will say this, that things, which are done in the present, were not about to be done in the past, before they are done.
Thus these foreknown events have their free results.Just as foreknowledge of present things brings no necessity to bear upon them as they come to pass, so also foreknowledge of future things brings no necessity to bear upon things which are to come.
'But you will say that there is no doubt of this too, whether there can be any foreknowledge of things which have not results bounden by necessity.For they do seem to lack harmony: and you think that if they are foreseen, the necessity follows; if there is no necessity, then they cannot be foreseen; nothing can be perceived certainly by knowledge, unless it be certain.But if things have uncertainty of result, but are foreseen as though certain, this is plainly the obscurity of opinion, and not the truth of knowledge.For you believe that to think aught other than it is, is the opposite of true knowledge.The cause of this error is that every man believes that all the subjects, that he knows, are known by their own force or Page 154nature alone, which are known; but it is quite the opposite.For every subject, that is known, is comprehended not according to its own force, but rather according to the nature of those who know it.Let me make this plain to you by a brief example: the roundness of a body may be known in one way by sight, in another way by touch.Sight can take in the whole body at once from a distance by judging its radii, while touch clings, as it were, to the outside of the sphere, and from close at hand perceives through the material parts the roundness of the body as it passes over the actual circumference.A man himself is differently comprehended by the senses, by imagination, by reason, and by intelligence.For the senses distinguish the form as set in the matter operated upon by the form; imagination distinguishes the appearance alone without the matter.Reason goes even further than imagination; by a general and universal contemplation it investigates the actual kind which is represented in individual specimens.Higher still is the view of the intelligence, which reaches above the sphere of the universal, and with the unsullied eye of the mind gazes upon that very form of the kind in its absolute simplicity.Herein the chief point for our consideration is this: the higher power of understanding includes the lower, but the lower never rises to the higher.For the senses are capable of understanding naught but the matter; imagination cannot look upon universal or natural kinds; reason cannot comprehend Page 155the absolute form; whereas the intelligence seems to look down from above and comprehend the form, and distinguishes all that lie below, but in such a way that it grasps the very form which could not be known to any other than itself.For it perceives and knows the general kind, as does reason; the appearance, as does the imagination; and the matter, as do the senses, but with one grasp of the mind it looks upon all with a clear conception of the whole.And reason too, as it views general kinds, does not make use of the imagination nor the senses, but yet does perceive the objects both of the imagination and of the senses.It is reason which thus defines a general kind according to its conception: Man, for instance, is an animal, biped and reasoning.This is a general notion of a natural kind, but no man denies that the subject can be approached by the imagination and by the senses, just because reason investigates it by a reasonable conception and not by the imagination or senses.Likewise, though imagination takes its beginning of seeing and forming appearances from the senses, yet without their aid it surveys each subject by an imaginative faculty of distinguishing, not by the distinguishing faculty of the senses.
'Do you see then, how in knowledge of all things, the subject uses its own standard of capability, and not those of the objects known?
