Whether Our Intellect Can Know the Future?
Objection 1: It would seem that our intellect knows the future. For
our intellect knows by means of intelligible species abstracted from
the "here" and "now," and related indifferently to all time. But it
can know the present. Therefore it can know the future.
Obj. 2: Further, man, while his senses are in suspense, can know
some future things, as in sleep, and in frenzy. But the intellect
is freer and more vigorous when removed from sense. Therefore the
intellect of its own nature can know the future.
Obj. 3: The intellectual knowledge of man is superior to any
knowledge of brutes. But some animals know the future; thus crows
by their frequent cawing foretell rain. Therefore much more can
the intellect know the future.
_On the contrary,_ It is written (Eccles. 8:6, 7), "There is a great
affliction for man, because he is ignorant of things past; and things
to come he cannot know by any messenger."
_I answer that,_ We must apply the same distinction to future things,
as we applied above (A. 3) to contingent things. For future things
considered as subject to time are singular, and the human intellect
knows them by reflection only, as stated above (A. 1). But the
principles of future things may be universal; and thus they may enter
the domain of the intellect and become the objects of science.
Speaking, however, of the knowledge of the future in a general way,
we must observe that the future may be known in two ways: either in
itself, or in its cause. The future cannot be known in itself save by
God alone; to Whom even that is present which in the course of events
is future, forasmuch as from eternity His glance embraces the whole
course of time, as we have said above when treating of God's
knowledge (Q. 14, A. 13). But forasmuch as it exists in its cause,
the future can be known by us also. And if, indeed, the cause be such
as to have a necessary connection with its future result, then the
future is known with scientific certitude, just as the astronomer
foresees the future eclipse. If, however, the cause be such as to
produce a certain result more frequently than not, then can the
future be known more or less conjecturally, according as its cause
is more or less inclined to produce the effect.
Reply Obj. 1: This argument considers that knowledge which is drawn
from universal causal principles; from these the future may be known,
according to the order of the effects to the cause.
Reply Obj. 2: As Augustine says (Confess. xii [*Gen. ad lit. xii.
13]), the soul has a certain power of forecasting, so that by its very
nature it can know the future; hence when withdrawn from corporeal
sense, and, as it were, concentrated on itself, it shares in the
knowledge of the future. Such an opinion would be reasonable if we
were to admit that the soul receives knowledge by participating the
ideas as the Platonists maintained, because in that case the soul by
its nature would know the universal causes of all effects, and would
only be impeded in its knowledge by the body, and hence when
withdrawn from the corporeal senses it would know the future.
But since it is connatural to our intellect to know things, not thus,
but by receiving its knowledge from the senses; it is not natural for
the soul to know the future when withdrawn from the senses: rather
does it know the future by the impression of superior spiritual and
corporeal causes; of spiritual causes, when by Divine power the human
intellect is enlightened through the ministry of angels, and the
phantasms are directed to the knowledge of future events; or, by the
influence of demons, when the imagination is moved regarding the
future known to the demons, as explained above (Q. 57, A. 3). The
soul is naturally more inclined to receive these impressions of
spiritual causes when it is withdrawn from the senses, as it is then
nearer to the spiritual world, and freer from external distractions.
The same may also come from superior corporeal causes. For it is
clear that superior bodies influence inferior bodies. Hence, in
consequence of the sensitive faculties being acts of corporeal
organs, the influence of the heavenly bodies causes the imagination
to be affected, and so, as the heavenly bodies cause many future
events, the imagination receives certain images of some such events.
These images are perceived more at night and while we sleep than in
the daytime and while we are awake, because, as stated in _De Somn.
et Vigil._ ii [*De Divinat. per somn. ii], "impressions made by day
are evanescent. The night air is calmer, when silence reigns, hence
bodily impressions are made in sleep, when slight internal movements
are felt more than in wakefulness, and such movements produce in the
imagination images from which the future may be foreseen."
Reply Obj. 3: Brute animals have no power above the imagination
wherewith to regulate it, as man has his reason, and therefore their
imagination follows entirely the influence of the heavenly bodies.
Thus from such animals' movements some future things, such as rain
and the like, may be known rather than from human movements directed
by reason. Hence the Philosopher says (De Somn. et Vig.), that "some
who are most imprudent are most far-seeing; for their intelligence
is not burdened with cares, but is as it were barren and bare of all
anxiety moving at the caprice of whatever is brought to bear on it."
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