Introduction
There are only two ways of becoming a historian of the future: scientific deduction and divination or fortune-telling. But scientific deduction would disqualify itself for cognition of the future by the process of scientific deduction. For science must always be careful not to make a fool of itself. Science would scarcely go further than a computation of probabilities.
Divination and fortune-telling, on the other hand, have the inestimable advantage of looking back up on a long and venerable practice, which according to incontrovertible tradition has produced remarkably successful results. In order to be genuine, the prophetic forms of cognition must know how to wear the veil of parable and to cast the shadow of mystery.
—FRANZ WERFEL, ...
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