The Consolation of Philosophy

by Boethius

All things, therefore, whose future occurrence is known to God do without doubt happen, but some of them are the result of free will.

Hope is not placed in God in vain and prayers are not made in vain, for if they are the right kind they cannot but be efficacious.

Avoid vice, therefore, and cultivate virtue; lift up your mind to the right kind of hope, and put forth humble prayers on high.

It is the abstract mathematical complexity of the system which regulates the movements of the planets which Boethius finds really wonderful, not just the physical construction of the universe or the immense speed of its rotation.

substance is primarily the definable essence or form of a thing, the principle in virtue of which the material element is some definite concrete object.

substance is primarily form which is, in itself, immaterial,

pure form alone is truly and primarily substance.

to prove a truth which is not self-evident. A cognitive life in which all truth can be simply ‘‘seen’’ would be the life of an intelligentia. an angel. A life of unmitigated rati. where nothing was simply ‘‘seen’’ and all had to be proved, would presumably be impossible; for nothing can be proved if nothing is self-evident. Man’s mental life is spent in laboriously connecting those frequent, but momentary, flashes of intelligenti. which constitute intellects.’.

The source of this argument that knowledge depends on the capacity of the knower to know, and not the capacity of the object to be known, is in the writings of Iamblichus, Ammonius and Proclus.