"[L]et us admit a prescience... that... imposes no necessity upon what is to happen; the freedom of the will... would... remain uninfluenced and intire. But although prescience, you may say, is not the necessary cause of future events, yet it is a sign that they shall necessarily happen; and hence it follows, that, although there were no prescience, future events would still be bound in the chain of necessity. But here it ought to be considered, the sign of a thing is not really the thing itself, but that it only points out what the individual is. For which reason it must be first made appear, that every thing happens by necessity, before we can conclude that prescience is the sign of this necessity: for if there be no necessity, prescience cannot be the sign of that which does not exist. To prove that nothing happens but by necessity, the arguments for this purpose must not be drawn from signs, or foreign causes; but from causes intimately connected with, and belonging to this neccesity."
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Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy
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