This did not seem very much of an answer to my mind, which in some inscrutable way seemed to be at this moment groping among fragments of thoughts that had come unbidden from the forgotten past. I felt helpless in the presence of the Captain; I could not presume to press his good-nature. Perhaps he saw my thought, for he added: "A man is distinct from other men, but not from himself. He constantly changes, and constantly remains the same."
"That is hard to understand, Captain."
"Everything, sir, is hard to understand, because everything means every other thing. If we could fully comprehend one thing, even the least,--if there be a least,--we should necessarily comprehend all things," said the Captain.
Then he talked at large of the relations that bind everything--and of matter, force, spirit, which he called a trinity.
"Then matter is of the same nature with God?" I asked; "and God has the properties of matter?"
"By no means, sir. God has none of the properties of matter. Even our minds, sir, which are more nearly like unto God than is anything else we conceive, have no properties like matter. Yet are we bound to matter, and our thoughts are limited."
"How can the mind contemplate God at all?"
"By pure reason only, sir. The imagination betrays. We try to image force, because we think that we succeed in imaging matter. We try to image spirit. I suppose that most people have a notion as to how God looks. Anything that has not extension is as nothing to our imagination. Yet we know that our minds are real, though we cannot attribute extension to mind. Divisibility is of matter; if the infinite mind has parts, then infinity is divisible--which is a contradiction."
"Then God has no properties?"
"Not in the sense that matter has, sir. If God has one of them, He has all of them. If we attribute extension to Him, we must attribute elasticity also, and all of them. But try to think of an elastic universal."