Now, from the moment that it preexists, it is not
surprising that we should be able to know it; it is even
astonishing, granted that it overhangs us on every side, that we
should not discover it oftener and more easily. It remains to be
learnt what would become of our life if everything were foreseen
in it, if we saw it unfolding beforehand, in its entirety, with
its events which would have to be inevitable, because, if it were
possible for us to avoid them, they would not exist and we could
not perceive them. Suppose that, instead of being abnormal,
uncertain, obscure, debatable and very unusual, prediction
became, so to speak, scientific, habitual, clear and infallible:
in a short time, having nothing more to foretell, it would die of
inanition. If, for instance, it was prophesied to me that I must
die in the course of a journey in Italy, I should naturally
abandon the journey; therefore it could not have been predicted
to me; and thus all life would soon be nothing but inaction,
pause and abstention, a soft of vast desert where the embryos of
still-born events would be gathered in heaps and where nothing
would grow save perhaps one or two more or less fortunate
enterprises and the little insignificant incidents which no one
would trouble to avoid. But these again are questions to which
there is no solution; and we will not pursue them further.
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