Now, do you suppose these things are done by the compulsion of a necessity?⁠—No, answered I; for, if everything were moved by compulsion, the effects of art would be vain and fruitless.⁠—If things then, which are doing under our eye, added she, are under no present necessity of happening, it must be admitted that these same things, before they befell, were under no necessity of taking place. It is plain, therefore, that some things befall, the event of which is altogether unconstrained by necessity. For I do not think any person will say that such things as are at present done, were not to happen before they were done. Why, therefore, may not things be foreseen, and not necessitated in their events? As the knowledge then of what is present imposes no necessity on things now done, so neither does the foreknowledge of what is to happen in future necessitate the things which are to take place.”