PREDICTION DOES NOT WORK BY PROVIDENCE, BUT BY ANALOGY.
6. If then (the bad things do not conform to Providence), the diviners and astrologers predict evil things only by the concatenation which occurs between contraries, between form and matter, for instance, in a composite being. Thus in contemplating the form and ("seminal) reason" one is really contemplating the being which receives the form; for one does not contemplate in the same way the intelligible animal, and the composite animal; what one contemplates in the composite animal is the ("seminal) reason" which gives form to what is inferior. Therefore, since the world is an animal, when one contemplates its occurrences, one is really contemplating the causes that make them arise, the Providence which presides over them, and whose action extends in an orderly manner to all beings and events; that is, to all animals, their actions and dispositions, which are dominated by Reason and mingled with necessity. We thus contemplate what has been mingled since the beginning, and what is still continually mingled. In this mixture, consequently, it is impossible to distinguish Providence from what conforms thereto, nor what derives from the substrate (that is, from matter, and which, consequently, is deformed, and evil). This is not a human task, not even of a man who might be wise or divine; such a privilege can be ascribed only to God.