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Then Boethus said: I would fain know what accidents fall out which time does not owe at length to Nature. What so prodigious or unlooked for, either by land or sea, either in respect of cities or men, which, if it be foretold, may not naturally come to pass at one season or other, in process of time? So that such a prophecy, to speak properly, cannot be called a prediction, but a bare speech or report, or rather a scattering or sowing of words in boundless infinity that have no probability or foundation; which, as they rove and wander in the air, Fortune accidentally meets, and musters together by chance, to correspond and agree with some event. For, in my opinion, there is a great difference between the coming to pass of what has been said and the saying of what shall happen. For the discourse of things that are not, being already in itself erroneous and faulty, cannot, in justice, claim the honor of after-credit from a fortuitous accident. Nor is it a true sign that the prophet foretells of his certain knowledge, because what he spoke happened to come to pass; in regard there are an infinite number of accidents, that fall in the course of nature, suitable to all events. He therefore that conjectures best, and whom the common proverb avers to be the exactest diviner, is he who finds out what shall happen hereafter, by tracing the footsteps of future probabilities. Whereas these Sibyls and enthusiastic wizards have only thrown into the capacious abyss of time, as into a vast and boundless ocean, whole heaps of words and sentences, comprehending all sorts of accidents and events, which, though some perchance may come to pass, were yet false when uttered, though afterwards by chance they may happen to be true.
