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These examples--and there are many more of a similar kind--are
enough, I think, to illustrate this class of premonitions. The
problem in these cases is simpler than when it relates to
fruitless warnings; at least it is simpler so long as we do not
bring into discussion the question of spirits, of unknown
intelligences, or of an actual knowledge of the future; otherwise
the same difficulty reappears and the warning, which this time
seems efficacious, is in reality just as vain. In fact, the
mysterious entity which knows that the traveler will go to the
water's edge, that the wheel will be on the point of leaving the
axle, that the copper will explode, or that the promontory will
fall at a precise moment, must at the same time know that the
traveler will not take the last fatal step, that the carriage
will not be overturned, that the copper will not hurt anybody and
that the canoe will pull away from the promontory. It is
inadmissible that, seeing one thing, it will not see the other,
since everything happens at the same point, in the course of the
same second. Can we say that, if it had not given warning, the
little saving movement would not have been executed? How can we
imagine a future which, at one and the same time, has parts that
are steadfast and others that are not? If it is foreseen that the
promontory will fall and that the traveler will escape, thanks to
the supernatural warning, it is necessarily foreseen that the
warning will be given; and, if so, what is the point of this
futile comedy? I see no reasonable explanation of it in the
spiritist or spiritualistic theory, which postulates a complete
knowledge of the future, at least at a settled point and moment.
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