arranged all things in measure, and number and weight."
316 The Literal Meaning ofGenesis both this way and that, that is, that whatever it was it would be there, because it was able to be there both this way and that, while he reserved to his own will the one way in which he was actually going to make him and did not weave it into the constitution of the world, it is clear that in this case the man was not made in a way contrary to how he was in that primordial establishment of causes, because there too it was prescribed that he could be made in this way, though it was not there prescribed that he necessarily would be made in this way. This, you see, was not written into the establishment ofcreation, but left to the good pleasure of the creator, whose will is what imposes necessity on things.
16, 27. We too, after all, with our rather feeble human capacity, can know, here and now about things that have come to be in time, what is due to the nature of each, which we will have gathered by experience; but about whether it will actually happen so in any particular case, we are entirely ignorant. It is the due of this young man's nature, for example, that he should grow old; but whether this is also God's will for him, we do not know. But it would not even be the due of his nature unless this had first been so in the will of God, who established all things. And of course the hidden formula of old age is there in the youthful body, as that ofyouth is in the child' s body; nor can it be perceived with the eyes, as can childhood in a child, as youth in a young man; but by another kind of awareness it is inferred that there is present in nature something latent whereby these hidden rhythms20 are brought out into the light of day, whether of youth emerging from childhood, or of old age emerging from youth. So then the formula which prescribes that this is a real possibility is hidden, but from the eyes, not from the mind. Whether on the other hand it is also something neces sary, of that we are altogether ignorant. We know indeed that what prescribes it as a possibility is there in the nature of the body itself, while manifestly not there is any formula prescribing that it is necessary.
17, 28. But perhaps the necessity of this man actually growing old is written into the world, while if it is not in the world, it is in God. For it is what he wills that will ofnecessity be in the future, and it is those things that he has foreknown which will really be in the future. Many things, you see, will be in the future as determined by lower, secondary causes, while if they are also in God's fore knowledge like that, they really will be in the future. But if they are there in a different manner, they will rather be in the future as they are there, where the one who foreknows them cannot be mistaken. Thus old age, we say, lies in the future for this young man; but for all that it is not in the future if he dies before reaching it, while this will happen as determined by other causes, whether ones woven into the world or ones reserved to the foreknowledge of God.
20. Numeri; literally "numbers." See one of his favorite quotations, Wis 1 1 :20: "You have arranged all things in measure, and number and weight."