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23. Suffer me, O Lord, to seek further; O my Hope, let not
my purpose be confounded. For if there are times past and future, I
desire to know where they are. But if as yet I do not succeed, I
still know, wherever they are, that they are not there as future or
past, but as present. For if there also they be future, they are not
as yet there; if even there they be past, they are no longer there.
Wheresoever, therefore, they are, whatsoever they are, they are
only so as present. Although past things are related as true, they
are drawn out from the memory, not the things themselves, which
have passed, but the words conceived from the images of the things
which they have formed in the mind as footprints in their passage
through the senses. My childhood, indeed, which no longer is, is in
time past, which now is not; but when I call to mind its image, and
speak of it, I behold it in the present, because it is as yet in my
memory. Whether there be a like cause of foretelling future things,
that of things which as yet are not the images may be perceived as
already existing, I confess, my God, I know not. This certainly
I know, that we generally think before on our future actions, and
that this premeditation is present; but that the action whereon we
premeditate is not yet, because it is future; which when we shall have
entered upon, and have begun to do that which we were premeditating,
then shall that action be, because then it is not future, but
present.
24. In whatever manner, therefore, this secret preconception of
future things may be, nothing can be seen, save what is. But what
now is is not future, but present. When, therefore, they say that
things future are seen, it is not themselves, which as yet are not
(that is, which are future); but their causes or their signs perhaps
are seen, the which already are. Therefore, to those already
beholding them, they are not future, but present, from which future
things conceived in the mind are foretold. Which conceptions again now
are, and they who foretell those things behold these conceptions
present before them. Let now so multitudinous a variety of things
afford me some example. I behold daybreak; I foretell that the sun
is about to rise. That which I behold is present; what I foretell
is future, not that the sun is future, which already is; but his
rising, which is not yet. Yet even its rising I could not predict
unless I had an image of it in my mind, as now I have while I
speak. But that dawn which I see in the sky is not the rising of the
sun, although it may go before it, nor that imagination in my mind;
which two are seen as present, that the other which is future may be
foretold. Future things, therefore, are not as yet; and if they are
not as yet, they are not. And if they are not, they cannot be seen
at all; but they can be foretold from things present which now are,
and are seen.
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