"I should have to invent a term to express my notion," said Labio. "I think all things are but emanations from, and return to, the same being. What might be called pantheism, if we coined a word from the language of your country, best explains, I fancy, the phenomena of the universe. Every thing is growth and decay; but as decay furnishes larger growth, every thing is growth at last and in the total sum."
"Is this growth of all things under any general control?" asked Dionysius.
"Each thing," replied Labio, "is under the control of its own nature, which evidently it cannot change, and every inferior thing besides is under the control of any superior thing with which it may come into relations. Thus what is active is superior as such to what is passive; it is more excellent and a higher force to act upon, or sway, or change, or move, or form, than to be acted upon, moved, or modified. The mind of an architect, for instance, is a higher force than the dead weight of the inert stones from which he builds a palace."
"Then you hold that some things have force, and that there are greater and smaller forces?" asked Dionysius.
"Undoubtedly," said Labio.
"Which is more excellent," asked Dionysius, "a force which can move itself, or a force which, in order to exist, must be set in motion by another?"
"This last," said Labio, "is only the first prolonged; it is but a continuation, an effect."
"And an effect," pursued the Greek, "is inferior, as such, to what controls it; and inferior also in its very nature to that which requires no cause?"
"Certainly," returned Labio; "I am not so dull as to gainsay that."
"Now favor me with your attention," returned the Athenian; "I want you to extricate me from a dilemma. Either every thing which possesses force has received its force from something else; or there is something which possesses force, and which never received this force from any thing else, and which, therefore, has possessed it from all eternity. Which of these two alternatives do you select?"