Therefore, if the governing Power of the world seems to resemble
those who learn, it will be necessary to attribute to it reasoning,
reflection, and memory, so that it may compare the past with the
present or the future. But if, on the contrary, its knowledge be such
as to have nothing more to learn, and to remain in a perfectly stable
condition, it evidently possesses wisdom by itself. If it know future
things--a privilege that could not be denied it under penalty of
absurdity--why would it not also know how they are to occur? Knowing
all this, it would have no further need of comparing the past with
the present. Besides, this knowledge of its future will not resemble
the prevision of the foretellers, but to the certitude entertained by
makers about their handiwork. This certitude admits no hesitation,
no ambiguity; it is absolute; as soon as it has obtained assent, it
remains immutable. Consequently, the wisdom about the future is the
same as about the present, because it is immutable; that is, without
ratiocination. If, however, it did not know the future things it
was to produce, it would not know how to produce them, and it would
produce them without rule, accidentally, by chance. In its production,
it remains immutable; consequently, it produces without changing, at
least as far as permitted by the model borne within it. Its action is
therefore uniform, ever the same; otherwise, the soul might err. If
its work was to contain differences, it does not derive these from
itself, but from the ("seminal) reasons" which themselves proceed
from the creating principle. Thus the created things depend from the
series of reasons, and the creating principle has no need to hesitate,
to deliberate, neither to support a painful work, as was thought by
some philosophers who considered the task of regulating the universe
wearisome. It would indeed be a tiresome task to handle a strange
matter, that is, one which is unmanageable. But when a power by itself
dominates (what it forms), it cannot have need of anything but itself
and its counsel; that is, its wisdom, for in such a power the counsel
is identical with wisdom. It therefore needs nothing for creation,
since the wisdom it possesses is not a borrowed wisdom. It needs
nothing (extraneous or) adventitious; consequently, neither reasoning
nor memory, which faculties yield us nothing but what is adventitious.