SUO: Determination
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| Now that I have proved sufficiently that everything
| comes to pass according to determinate reasons, there
| cannot be any more difficulty over these principles
| of God's foreknowledge. Although these determinations
| do not compel, they cannot but be certain, and they
| foreshadow what shall happen.
|
| It is true that God sees all at once the whole sequence
| of this universe, when he chooses it, and that thus he
| has no need of the connexion of effects and causes in
| order to foresee these effects. But since his wisdom
| causes him to choose a sequence in perfect connexion,
| he cannot but see one part of the sequence in the other.
|
| It is one of the rules of my system of general harmony,
| 'that the present is big with the future', and that he
| who sees all sees in that which is that which shall be.
|
| What is more, I have proved conclusively that God sees in
| each portion of the universe the whole universe, owing to
| the perfect connexion of things. He is infinitely more
| discerning than Pythagoras, who judged the height of
| Hercules by the size of his footprint. There must
| therefore be no doubt that effects follow their
| causes determinately, in spite of contingency
| and even of freedom, which nevertheless exist
| together with certainty or determination.
|
| Gottfried Wilhelm (Freiherr von) Leibniz,
|'Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God,
| the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil',
| Edited with an Introduction by Austin Farrer,
| Translated by E.M. Huggard from C.J. Gerhardt's
| Edition of the 'Collected Philosophical Works',
| 1875-1890. Routledge 1951. Open Court 1985.
| Paragraph 360, page 341.
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