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Updated: June 2, 2025
Darwin's book with each other, so far as I could understand it, the doctrine of the author of the 'Vestiges of Creation' was simply, that God created all things, and that when He created matter He impressed on it certain laws; that matter, being evolved according to those laws, should produce beings and organs mutually adapted to one another and to the world; and that every successive development which should be produced was essentially foreseen, foreknown, and predetermined by the Deity.
Where would be the interest of a race if its result were a foregone conclusion? Where the passion of a battle if its issue were foreknown? What if we should prove to be somnambulists treading some dizzy edge between two abysses, and able to reach the goal only on condition that we are unconscious of the process?
For though it would have been peradventure better to have bestowed them well before, yet since he kept them for some good purpose he would not have left them unbestowed if he had foreknown the chance.
I suggest that the theorists have hitherto dwelt far too much on curiosity which may be defined as the interest of ignorance and far too little on the feeling of superiority, of clairvoyance, with which we contemplate a foreknown action, whether of a comic or of a tragic cast. Of course the action must be, essentially if not in every detail, true to nature.
He contends, without reserve, that the free actions of men are not within the divine prescience; resting his doctrine partly on the assumption that there are no strict and absolute predictions in Scripture of those actions in which men are represented as free and responsible; and partly on the abstract reason, that such actions are in their nature impossible to be certainly foreknown.
It would probably be safe to guess that, for a century past, two-thirds of every audience have clearly foreknown the outcome of the situation.
Does it leave them free to depart from the influence of motives? By no means. It would be a contradiction in terms, according to this argument, to say that they are certainly and infallibly foreknown, and yet that they may possibly not come to pass. Hence, if the argument proves anything, it proves the absolute fatality of all human volitions.
Moderate measures, my lords, if not always the most honourable in the opinion of minds vitiated by false notions of grandeur, are, at least, always the most safe; and are, therefore, eligible at least, till the scene of affairs begins to open, and the success of a more vigorous conduct may with some degree of certainty be foreknown; and it must at least be thought imprudent for those to hazard much who can gain nothing, and therefore it will not be easy to assign any reason that may justify our conduct on the present occasion.
This happens but twice in about a hundred years, at the distance of about eight years from each other, and has happened twice in our time, both of which were foreknown by calculation. It can also be known when they will happen again for a thousand years to come, or to any other portion of time.
It is not therefore wonderful, if Sokrates, who was a man exceedingly perfect, and also wise by the testimony of Apollo, should know and worship this his god; and that hence, this his keeper, and nearly, as I may say, his equal, his associate and domestic, should repel from him everything which ought to be repelled, foresee what ought to be noticed, and pre-admonish him of what ought to be foreknown by him, in those cases in which, human wisdom being no longer of any use, he was in want not of counsel but of presage, in order that when he was vacillating through doubt, he might be rendered firm through divination.
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