Prophecy may vary between being an intellectual amusement and a serious
occupation; serious not only in its intentions, but in its consequences.
For it is the lot of prophets who frighten or disappoint to be stoned.
But for some of us moderns, who have been touched with the spirit of
science, prophesying is almost a habit of mind.

Science is very largely analysis aimed at forecasting. The test of any
scientific law is our verification of its anticipations. The scientific
training develops the idea that whatever is going to happen is really
here now--if only one could see it. And when one is taken by surprise
the tendency is not to say with the untrained man, "Now, who'd ha'
thought it?" but "Now, what was it we overlooked?"

Everything that has ever existed or that will ever exist is here--for
anyone who has eyes to see. But some of it demands eyes of superhuman
penetration. Some of it is patent; we are almost as certain of next
Christmas and the tides of the year 1960 and the death before 3000 A.D.
of everybody now alive as if these things had already happened. Below
that level of certainty, but still at a very high level of certainty,
there are such things as that men will probably be making aeroplanes of
an improved pattern in 1950, or that there will be a through railway
connection between Constantinople and Bombay and between Baku and Bombay
in the next half-century. From such grades of certainty as this, one may
come down the scale until the most obscure mystery of all is reached:
the mystery of the individual. Will England presently produce a military
genius? or what will Mr. Belloc say the day after to-morrow? The most
accessible field for the prophet is the heavens; the least is the secret
of the jumping cat within the human skull. How will so-and-so behave,
and how will the nation take it? For such questions as that we need the