agine that no one will deny that things now taking place
were about to come to pass before they were actually happening. Such
things, however much foreknown, are in their occurrence _free_. For even
as knowledge of things present imports no necessity into things that are
taking place, so foreknowledge of the future imports none into things
that are about to come. But this, thou wilt say, is the very point in
dispute--whether any foreknowing is possible of things whose occurrence
is not necessary. For here there seems to thee a contradiction, and, if
they are foreseen, their necessity follows; whereas if there is no
necessity, they can by no means be foreknown; and thou thinkest that
nothing can be grasped as known unless it is certain, but if things
whose occurrence is uncertain are foreknown as certain, this is the very
mist of opinion, not the truth of knowledge. For to think of things
otherwise than as they are, thou believest to be incompatible with the
soundness of knowledge.

'Now, the cause of the mistake is this--that men think that all
knowledge is cognized purely by the nature and efficacy of the thing
known. Whereas the case is the very reverse: all that is known is
grasped not conformably to its own efficacy, but rather conformably to
the faculty of the knower. An example will make this clear: the
roundness of a body is recognised in one way by sight, in another by
touch. Sight looks upon it from a distance as a whole by a simultaneous
reflection of rays; touch grasps the roundness piecemeal, by contact and
attachment to the surface, and by actual movement round the periphery
itself. Man himself, likewise, is viewed in one way by Sense, in another
by Imagination, in another way, again, by Thought, in another by pure
Intelligence. Sense judges figure clothed in material substance,
Imagination figure alone without matter. Thought transcends this again,
and by its contemplation of universals considers the type itself which
is contained in the individual. The eye of Intelligence is yet more
exalted; for overpassing the sphere of the universal, it will behold
absolute form itself by the pure force of the mind's vision. Wherein the
main point to be considered is this: the higher faculty of comprehension
embraces the lower, while the lower cannot rise to the higher. For Sense
has no efficacy beyond matter, nor can Imagination behold universal
ideas, nor Thought embrace pure form; but Intelligence, looking down, as