"There are in your philosophy," continued Augustus, "two leading principles, my Athenian, in support of which I am both curious and anxious to hear you advance some solid and convincing reasons. You despise, as Cicero despised it, the notion of a plurality of gods. You affirm there is only one. You say that a god who could begin to be a god, or begin at all, can be no god; and that the true King of all kings, is the giver of whatever exists, and the recipient of nothing. That he is without a body, a pure and holy intelligence. That as every thing else is his work, there never were, and never will be, and never could be, any limits either of his power or of his knowledge. At the same time, you reject the notion, adopted in some Greek systems, that he is the soul of the visible universe, and this universe his body; affirming him to be antecedent to and independent of all things, and all other things to be absolutely dependent upon him.
"Is it not so?"
"Yes," answered Dionysius; "such is my assured conviction."
"This, then," said Augustus, "is the first question upon which I wish to hear you; and the second is, whether that force or principle within each of us which thinks, reflects, reasons, and is conscious of itself, will perish at our death, or will live beyond it, and is of such a nature that it will never perish, as Plato, Xenophon, Cicero, and many other illustrious men and very great thinkers have so ardently contended."
"Ah!" said Dionysius, in a voice indescribably sweet and thrilling, while all turned their eyes toward him; "unless that God himself assist me, I shall be quite unequal to the task you impose upon me, Augustus. I am not worthy to treat the subject upon which you desire me to speak. You are aware that many learned persons in our Europe expect, and for a long time have expected, some divine being to appear one day among men. I see the able governor of Rome, Lucius Piso. None will accuse Piso of credulity, none suppose him a weaver of idle fancies, or a dreamer of gratuitous reveries. An able administrator, an accomplished man of the world, and, if he will pardon me, more inclined to be too sarcastic than too indulgent, he, nevertheless, despises not this expectation. Our learned friend Strabo, whom I see near me, will tell you moreover how it prevails, and has from immemorial times prevailed, in various and often perverted forms, yet with an underlying essence of permanent identity, among the innumerable nations which make some thirty languages resound through the immense expanses of Asia. But Domitius Afer desires to interrupt me."
Afer said,
"I do not discern how this ancient and mysterious expectation which floats vaguely through the traditions of all mankind, and in a more definite shape forms the groundwork for the whole religion of the Jewish nation, can be at all connected either with the immortality of the thinking principle inside of us, or with the question whether there is one supreme, absolute, and eternal God who made this universe."
"All I would have added," replied Dionysius, "in regard to that expectation was, that after the appearance of this universal benefactor, many sublime ideas which hitherto only the strongest intellects have entertained, will probably become familiar to the meanest—common to all.
"I pass to the two questions which Augustus desires to hear argued; and, first, let me collect the opinions of this brilliant company; I will then compare them with mine. What does Antistius Labio think?"