DANGER IN REASONING FROM THE MANNER IN WHICH WE FOREKNOW EVENTS TO THAT OF DIVINE PRESCIENCE.

“To begin, then, with a very simple remark: if we conceive that foreknowledge in the Divine Being acts as it does in us, we run the risk of forming a most incorrect notion of it, and consequently, of seeing a contradiction between it and liberty, that would disappear altogether had we a truer notion. Let us consider that we have not the same faculty for foreseeing the future as we have of reviewing the past; and even in cases where we do anticipate it, it is by an induction from the past. This induction may amount either to certainty, or merely to probability. It will amount to certainty when we are perfectly acquainted with necessary causes, and their law of operation. The effects of such causes in given circumstances having been determined by experience, we can predict the return of similar effects under similar circumstances with entire certainty, so long at least as the present laws of nature remain in force. It is in this way that we foresee, in most cases, the physical occurrences, whose law of operation is known to us; and such foresight would extend much further, were it not for unexpected circumstances which come in to modify the result. This induction can never go beyond probability, however, when we consider the acts of free causes; and for the very reason that they are free, and that the effects which arise from such causes are not of necessary occurrence, and do not invariably follow the same antecedent circumstances. Where the question is, then, as to the acts of any free cause, we are never able to foresee it with certainty, and induction is limited to conjectures of probability.

Such is the operation, and such are the limits of human foresight. Our minds foresee the future by induction from the past; this foresight can never attain certainty except in the case of causes and effects connected by necessary dependence; when the effects of free causes are to be anticipated, as all such effects are contingent, our foresight must be merely conjecture.”