Could this be the case with all predictions? Were the prophecies of the
great prophets, the oracles of the sibyls, witches, pythonesses content
thus to reflect, translate, raise to the level of the intelligible world
the instinctive clairvoyance of the individuals or peoples that listened
to them? Let each accept the reply or the hypothesis which his own
experience suggests to him. I have given mine with the simplicity and
sincerity which a question of this nature demands.[2]
To resume my inquiry. In so far, then, as concerns that formidable
unknown which stretches before us, I found nothing conclusive, nothing
decisive; and yet, I repeat, it is almost incredible that we should not
know the Future. I can imagine that we stand opposite to it as though
opposite to a forgotten past. We might try to remember it. It would be a
question of inventing or re-discovering the road taken by that memory
which precedes us.
I can conceive that we are not qualified to know beforehand the
disturbances of the elements, the destiny of the planets of the earth,
of empires, peoples and races. All this does not touch us directly, and
we know it in the past thanks only to the artifices of history. But that
which regards us, that which is within our reach, that which is to
unfold itself within the little sphere of years, a secretion of our
spiritual organism, that envelops us in Time, even as the shell or the
cocoon envelops the mollusc or the insect in Space; that, together with
all the external events relating to it, is probably recorded in that
sphere. In any case, it would be much more natural that it were so
recorded than comprehensible that it were not. There we have realities
struggling with an illusion; and there is nothing to prevent us from
believing that, here as elsewhere, realities will end by overcoming
illusion. Realities are what will happen to us, having already happened
in the history that overhangs our own, the motionless and superhuman
history of the universe. Illusion is the opaque veil woven with the
ephemeral threads called Yesterday, To-day and To-Morrow, which we
embroider on those realities. But it is not indispensable that our
existence should continue the eternal dupe of that illusion. We may even
ask ourselves whether our extraordinary unfitness for knowing a thing so
simple, so incontestable, so perfect and so unnecessary as the Future,
would not form one of the greatest subjects for astonishment to an
inhabitant of another star who should visit us.
To-day, all this appears to us so profoundly impossible that we find it
difficult to imagine how the certain reality of the Future would refute
the objections which we make to it in the name of the organic illusion
of our minds. We say to it, for instance: If, at the moment of
undertaking an affair, we could know that its outcome would be
unfortunate, we should not undertake it; and, since it must be written
somewhere, in Time, before our question has been put, that the affair
will not take place, seeing that we abandon it, we could not, therefore,
foresee the outcome of that which will have no beginning.
So as not to lose ourselves in this road, which would lead us whither
nothing calls us, it will be enough for us to say that the Future, like
all that exists, is probably more coherent and more logical than the
logic of our imagination and that all our hesitations and uncertainties
are included in its provisions.
Moreover, we must not believe that the march of events would be
completely upset if we knew it beforehand. First, only they would know
the Future, or a part of the Future, who would take the trouble to learn
it; even as only they know the Past, or a part of their own Present, who
have the courage and the intelligence to examine it. We should quickly
accommodate ourselves to the lessons of this new science, even as we
have accommodated ourselves to those of history. We should soon make
allowance for the evils which we could not escape and for inevitable
evils. The wiser among us, for themselves, would lessen the sum total of
the latter; and the others would meet them half-way, even as now they go
to meet many certain disasters which are easily foretold. The amount of
our vexations would be somewhat decreased, but less than we hope; for
already our reason is able to foresee a portion of our Future, if not
with the material evidence that we dream of, at least with a moral
certainty that is often satisfying: yet we observe that the majority of
men derive hardly any profit from this easy foreknowledge. Such men
would neglect the counsels of the Future, even as they hear, without
following it, the advice of the Past.