"If things then which are doing under our eye... are under no present necessity of happening; it must be admitted that these same things, before they befel, were under no necessity of taking place. It is plain, therefore, that some things... [are] unconstrained by necessity. For I do not think any person will say that such things as are at present done, were not to happen before they were done. Why therefore may not things be foreseen, and not necessitated in their events? As the knowledge then of what is present imposes no necessity on things now done; so neither does the foreknowledge of what is to happen in future, necessitate the things which are to take place. But you may say, you hesitate with regard to this point; whether there can be any certain foreknowledge of things, of which the event is not necessitated? For here there seems to he an evident contradiction. If things are, foreseen, you may contend they are under a necessity of happening; but if their event is not necessary, they cannot possibly be foreseen, because prescience can foresee nothing but what is absolutely certain: and if things uncertain in their events are foreseen as certain, this prescience, you may maintain, is nothing more than a false opinion: for when we comprehend things differently from what they really are, we have but imperfect ideas of them, very remote from the truth of science. To this I would answer, that the cause of this mistake is, that men imagine that their knowledge is derived entirely from the nature of the things known; whereas it is quite the reverse; since things are not known from properties inherent in the object of knowledge, but by faculties residing in the perceiver."