luck. But he wrongly adds: 'Est autum fortuna; rerum igitur fortuitarum
nulla praesensio est.' There is luck, therefore future events cannot be
foreseen. He ought rather to have concluded that, events being
predetermined and foreseen, there is no luck. But he was then speaking
against the Stoics, in the character of an Academician.

363. The Stoics already derived from the decrees of God the prevision of
events. For, as Cicero says in the same book: 'Sequitur porro nihil Deos
ignorare, quod omnia ab iis sint constituta.' And, according to my system,
God, having seen the possible world that he desired to create, foresaw[343]
everything therein. Thus one may say that the _divine knowledge of vision
differs from the knowledge of simple intelligence_ only in that it adds to
the latter the acquaintance with the actual decree to choose this sequence
of things which simple intelligence had already presented, but only as
possible; and this decree now makes the present universe.

364. Thus the Socinians cannot be excused for denying to God the certain
knowledge of future events, and above all of the future resolves of a free
creature. For even though they had supposed that there is a freedom of
complete indifference, so that the will can choose without cause, and that
thus this effect could not be seen in its cause (which is a great
absurdity), they ought always to take into account that God was able to
foresee this event in the idea of the possible world that he resolved to
create. But the idea which they have of God is unworthy of the Author of
things, and is not commensurate with the skill and wit which the writers of
this party often display in certain particular discussions. The author of
the _Reflexion on the Picture of Socinianism_ was not altogether mistaken
in saying that the God of the Socinians would be ignorant and powerless,
like the God of Epicurus, every day confounded by events and living from
one day to the next, if he only knows by conjecture what the will of men is
to be.

365. The whole difficulty here has therefore only come from a wrong idea of
contingency and of freedom, which was thought to have need of a complete
indifference or equipoise, an imaginary thing, of which neither a notion
nor an example exists, nor ever can exist. Apparently M. Descartes had been
imbued with the idea in his youth, at the College of la Fleche. That caused
him to say (part I of his _Principles_, art. 41): 'Our thought is fin