Foreknowledge

“ But that the foreknowledge of God should be a cause of any thing, cannot be truly said, seeing foreknowledge is knowledge, and knowledge depends on the existence of the things known, and not they on it. ”

“ If all future events are necessitated, then all past events are necessitated. But if we know anything, we know that all present events are not necessitated, and hence, all future events will not be necessitated. We deem it always safer to reason thus from the known to the unknown, than to invert the process.
But suppose that foreknowledge proves that all human volitions are under the influence of causes, in what sense does it leave them free? ”

“ Throughout his journey, he is still in presence of matters of fact, which, however startling, are continuous with the realities of actual experience. The problems about freewill and foreknowledge are not supposed to be solved by stating the facts. ”

“ But though foreknowledge in God should be admitted to be something of a very different nature” to the same quality in man, yet as it is represented as something equivalent to foreknowledge, whatever that something may be, since in consequence of it, prophecies have actually been uttered and fulfilled, and of such a kind, too, as relate to actions for which men have in fact been held accountable; all the original difficulty of reconciling contingent events to this something, of which human foreknowledge is a kind of shadow,” as a map of China is to China itself,” remains in full force. ”

“ Often we succeed in forming a complete association with the past, we localize the given familiar experience, and then complete recognition ensues. Familiarity is incomplete, vague, indefinite recognition. ”

“ Interrogating this witness, each finds in himself a power to think and reason. That is, an intellectual faculty, by the exercise of which there is intelligence, memory to retain or recall things once known, and imagination, that creates and represents things that are not, as though they were. ”

“ The lesson is that we should not pay attention to names and appearances, but that we should penetrate beneath the surfaces of things; that we must consider real abilities, evaluate past records, and trust our judgment to bring us to a knowledge of the truth. ”

“ The reason why we place any credit in witnesses and historians, is not derived from any connexion, which we perceive a priori, between testimony and reality, but because we are accustomed to find a conformity between them. ”

“ No mystery: down with mystery. It is the folly of the human race, and worse than ignorance, or knowing, or confessing to know, nothing. There is no Christ in the mystery. "How can we reason, but from what we know?" The knowledge must be first. Nothing precedes knowledge but the thing to be known. Nothing is required after; but a dealing with the thing known by principle of reason. ”

“ The known, that is to say, what we are accustomed to, so that we no longer marvel at it, the commonplace, any kind of rule to which we are habituated, all and everything in which we know ourselves to be at home:—what? is our need of knowing not just this need of the known? the will to discover in everything strange, unusual, or questionable, something which no longer disquiets us? ”

“ Being freed from its bondage to the present circumstances, living in the by-gone past the recognitive moment gets a glimpse of the not yet born future into which the free representative elements are projected. ”

“ I thought I heard him say; "either he must listen to reason, or I must have recourse to the last resource of civilization." Then, addressing me in a louder tone, he hurriedly exclaimed, "Listen: no stranger must witness what you have witnessed. ”

“ From this, it necessarily follows, that between none of our ideas is the association more intimate and intense, than between antecedent and consequent, in the order of events. Whenever we perceive an event, the mind instantly flies to its antecedent. I hear words in the street; event: some one, of course, is making them; antecedent. My house is broken, and my goods are gone; event: a thief has taken them; antecedent. This is that remarkable case of association, in which the combination is inseparable; a case of so much importance in explaining some of the more mysterious phenomena of thought. ”

“ If by revelation is meant a book or a set of books whose origin is, as a rule, veiled in antiquity; within whose covers is confined the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth; whose authority is the highest on all conceivable things; to which the individual consciousness must ever yield priority or be postponed; before which reason must be silent, conscience dumb and the heart awe-struck ”

“ All the terms and the relations which a judgment contains depend on the knowledge we have by acquaintance—that is to say, we are ultimately dependent on our actual experience for all knowledge whatever, whether it is acquaintance or description, for we can only describe in terms with which we are acquainted; but in the judgment these elements are combined into new objects, or a certain relation is declared to exist between objects, and it is this combination of the elements of the judgment that involves its truth or falsehood. ”

“ And if, reflecting on this all-pervasive character of the Intelligible and of Intelligence, we formulate certain 'Laws of Thought', we are condensing into isolated judgements truth for which there is overwhelming evidence. Such judgements are 'indubitable'; for an intelligent doubt presupposes knowledge, and any and every knowledge inevitably, confirms them. ”

“ As all actions, performed by intelligent creatures, as such, suppose knowledge, so their determinations are the result of fore-knowledge, for the will follows the dictates of the understanding; therefore we must suppose God’s fore-knowledge, to be antecedent to, and the ground and reason of his determinations. ”

“ In several books and newspapers I happened to read lately, I have noticed a certain tone touching the uneducated witness; phrases like "the vagueness characteristic of their class," or "easily confused, as such witnesses are." Now such vagueness is simple truthfulness. Nine times out of ten, it is the confusion any man would show at any given instant about the complications which crowd human life. ”

“ Would it be considered a sufficient reason for the absolute rejection of any of these facts—or a whole class of facts—that we are still ignorant of the principle upon which they depend, and that such knowledge is beyond our reach? Facts are every day believed, upon observation, or upon testimony, which we should be exceedingly puzzled to account for, if called upon to do so. ”

“ For, my lords, what is the evidence of common fame, which has been so much exalted, and so confidently produced? Does not every man see that, on such occasions, two questions may be asked, of which, perhaps, neither can easily be answered, and which, yet, must both be resolved before common fame can be admitted as a proof of facts. ”

“ I announced another discovery to be made by the mirror; which was, the showing every man his own character. The importance of this knowledge is owned by all, and by all the study is neglected, perhaps from its difficulty, since it is as hard to know our own faults as not to know the faults of our friend. I proposed this trial, thinking it the most useful of all, and persuaded that Truth could not make a nobler communication to man than his own mind. ”

“ Nay, whatsoever proceedeth from these Mines of divine Wisdom and these Treasuries of eternal knowledge is truth, and naught else but the truth. The saying: “Knowledge is one point, which the foolish have multiplied” is a proof of Our argument, and the tradition: “Knowledge is a light which God sheddeth into the heart of whomsoever He willeth” a confirmation of Our statement. ”

“ Can folly itself believe that the truth of any thing revealed to our immortal souls by infinite wisdom, requires confirmation; or that if it does, that confirmation can be found in the authority from which it was first derived? And is it not extraordinary, that any individual can go on day after day, and year after year, professing to explain to us the nature and object of revelation, and the use of our reason when applied to it ”

“ And the way to acquire such knowledge is not, we submit, to treat with indifference or neglect everything that claims to be a new revelation, but to "watch"—not with the eyes of the body, but with the eyes of the mind, that is, with our intellectual and reasoning faculties. ”

“ No truth, or idea of any kind, can make an effective entrance into the mind, or can find a permanent lodgement in the memory, so as to become "knowledge," until it has successfully undergone this process. ”

“ That human reason can comprehend some causes is past denial, and once we are forced to recognise a given element in experience, it is reasonable to await positive evidence before we complicate our acknowledgment with qualifications. ”

“ And by dint of all these matters, this long continued acquaintance only reviving the impressions received in early life, they had no doubt of the identity of the person. Was there ever a more perfect train of evidence exhibited to prove the identity of a person, than on the present occasion? ”

“ Recognition completes what attention begins. The attentive man wants to know, the recognizing man knows, or thinks that he knows. Recognition implies accompanying attention. Attention without recognition implies wonder, curiosity, perplexity, perhaps terror. But what is the law of this process of recognition? Does the process affect the impressions themselves that are the basis of the recognition? The answer is: Very distinctly, recognition does affect the impressions. The activity involved in recognition alters the data of sense, and that in almost every case. ”

“ How do we come to overlook ourselves so completely as we usually do when apprehending things? Answer, The law of familiarity fully accounts for this.) Thing or things-plus-me is thus fixed as the only knowable, the only possibly knowable, and the knowable alone having been fixed as that which we can be ignorant of, it follows that thing-or-things-plus- (another) -me is what alone we can be ignorant of. ”

“ And, fourthly, can it be a matter of indifference to any of us what evidence the mind offers concerning its own moral nature, and what is the value of that evidence, and the laws deducible therefrom? How true it thus appears that "know thyself" lies at the root of all knowledge, and that the man who receives no witness from within can know nothing as he ought to know it! ”

“ Should you receive a vision or revelation from the Almighty, one that the Lord gave you concerning yourselves, or this people, but which you are not to reveal on account of your not being the proper person, or because it ought not to be known by the people at present, you should shut it up and seal it as close, and lock it as tight as heaven is to you, and make it as secret as the grave. The Lord has no {63} confidence in those who reveal secrets, for he cannot safely reveal himself to such persons. ”

“ The all-important considerations with the historian, are the notoriety of the fact and the truthfulness of the informant. Facts that a man may have heard detailed by his grandfather or [pg 389] his contemporaries as having happened in their time stand as representations of contemporaneous testimony in the same position as those derived from the earlier generation.
4. But when a third stage is interposed in the transmission of events, as for instance when we learn from our fathers or grandfathers what they have learnt from theirs, an element of uncertainty is introduced. ”

“ The immediate data of consciousness are named by some philosophers sense data, by others, presentations, by others images, and there is much controversy as to their nature and existence, but with this controversy we are not here concerned—we are seeking to make clear an obvious distinction, namely, the distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. ”

“ This explanation by a 'faculty' is one thing which explanation by association has superseded altogether. If, by saying we have a faculty of memory, you mean nothing more than the fact that we can remember, nothing more than an abstract name for our power inwardly to recall the past, there is no harm done: we do have the faculty; for we unquestionably have such a power. But if, by faculty, you mean a principle of explanation of our general power to recall, your psychology is empty. The associationist psychology, on the other hand, gives an explanation of each particular fact of recollection ”

“ In all these cases, recognition involves a lively reaction of my mind upon external impressions. Recognition is not found apart from attention, though attention may exist more or less completely without recognition. ”

“ If, therefore, we knew what all names signify, we should know every thing which, in the existing state of human knowledge, is capable either of being made a subject of affirmation or denial, or of being itself affirmed or denied of a subject. ”

“ In it you will find much that is familiar to you, though you may never have read or heard anything of the kind; for there is a reality, beneath the unfamiliar accident, which may be recognised in a moment as native to the secret [Pg 4] life that lives behind the brain and the wise nerves with their dim ancestral knowledge. ”

“ The power of recollection is the free power of imagination as a faculty of reproduction, in the manner in which we have described that faculty before.
2. The power of recollection is a power which is altogether free, stands under the control of the will and reason, and is susceptible of further culture by means of practice and rules of art.
3. The law and thread which guides this power of imagination, and by means whereof that power assigns to the reproduced conditions their determined position in time, is—Conditionedness. ”