and every child on terminus is brought up to believe that hari seldon formulated a plan , that he foresaw everything five centuries ago , that he set up the foundation in such a way that he could spot certain crises , and that his image would appear holographically at those crises , and tell us the minimum we had to know to go on to the next crisis , and thus lead us through a thousand years of history until we could safely build a second and greater galactic empire on the ruins of the old decrepit structure that was falling apart five centuries ago and had disintegrated completely by two centuries ago . ''