Literary notes about Prescience (AI summary)
The term "prescience" has been deployed in literature to evoke both the mystical quality of foreknowledge and the divine attribute of all-knowing insight. In religious and philosophical texts, such as Saint Augustine’s work ([1], [2], [3], [4], [5]), prescience almost exclusively belongs to God, setting human understanding apart from the complete comprehension of future events—a notion even James I underscores by reserving it as a singular divine prerogative ([6]). In contrast, in the realm of personal experience and the uncanny, as seen in L. M. Montgomery’s writing ([7]), prescience becomes a mysterious, almost inexplicable human ability that provokes astonishment. Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s lyric ([8]) further illustrates this duality by blending the ephemeral capture of beauty with a subtle anticipation of its unfolding. Even in more pragmatic or allegorical uses, like in Bret Harte’s ([9]) and Kersey Graves’s ([10]) explorations, the term underscores themes of preparation and foresight—whether through divine means or through human inference.
- And if the same things be not thus repeated in cycles, then they cannot by any science or prescience be comprehended in their endless diversity.
— from The City of God, Volume I by Bishop of Hippo Saint Augustine - AFTER THAT, HE PROVES THAT THERE IS NO CONTRADICTION BETWEEN GOD'S PRESCIENCE AND OUR FREE WILL.
— from The City of God, Volume I by Bishop of Hippo Saint Augustine - Wherefore, be it far from us, in order to maintain our freedom, to deny the prescience of Him by whose help we are or shall be free.
— from The City of God, Volume I by Bishop of Hippo Saint Augustine - However, in his book on divination, he in his own person most openly opposes the doctrine of the prescience of future things.
— from The City of God, Volume I by Bishop of Hippo Saint Augustine - What is it, then, that Cicero feared in the prescience of future things?
— from The City of God, Volume I by Bishop of Hippo Saint Augustine - not that he hath any prescience, which is only proper to God: or yet knows anie thing by loking vpon [pg 005]
— from Daemonologie. by King of England James I - " "How did you know?" cried Anne, too aghast at this instance of Miss Cornelia's uncanny prescience to make a polite denial.
— from Anne's House of Dreams by L. M. Montgomery - Wonderful, Never to feel thee thrill the day or night With personal act or speech,—nor ever cull Some prescience of thee with the blossoms white
— from Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning - But they were furnished with liquor, which in this emergency stood them in place of food, fuel, rest, and prescience.
— from The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales by Bret Harte - But few of them have been fulfilled in any sense, and those few required no divine prescience to foresee the result.
— from The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors; Or, Christianity Before Christ by Kersey Graves
