There was a little start of pleasure in the company at the sudden and clear closes to which the Athenian was, each and every time, bringing what seemed likely to have grown into intricate and long disquisitions.
"My object, Augustus," pursued Dion, "was to show that we are all so made that we feel compelled to believe much more than we can prove. Otherwise, our knowledge would be confined within narrow limits indeed. He who knows no more than he can demonstrate, knows but little. May I now ask the distinguished orators, Montanus and Capito, for their theories respecting the questions which interest us so much to-night?"
Quintus Haterius prevented any answer to this appeal. "The eloquent and learned thinker," said he—"who will yet, I have no doubt, be the ornament of the Athenian Areopagus—has placed me, and, I think, many others near me, completely on his side, in what has hitherto passed. Young as he is, he has made us feel the masterful facility with which he is able to throw light upon errors placed where truth ought to stand. The operation is highly amusing; we could pass a long evening in watching it repeated against any number of antagonists. But come, Dionysius, reverse the process; take your own ground; maintain it; raise there your system like your castle; and let those assail it, if they please, whom your aggressive genius on the contrary turns to assail."
"Haterius is right," said Augustus. "I could assist at any number of these collisions; but they take a form which presents your mind to us, my Athenian, as a hunter and conqueror rather than a founder."
"But I am no founder," replied the youth, earnestly and modestly; "and I aspire to nothing of the kind. The fact is merely and simply this: After much study I have arrived at the conviction—first, that there is one absolutely perfect and eternal Being who governs the universe; and, next, that what thinks within each of us never will die. Since you desire to hear the reasons which have brought me to these conclusions, I cannot decline to state one or two of them at least—though this place, this occasion, and this dazzling company befit the subject far less, I fear, than if a few studious friends discussed it, sitting under the starry sky, on some quiet, unfrequented shore."
"Now we shall hear Plato," said Tiberius, with something almost like a sneer.
"Pardon me," said Dionysius, "Plato may speak for himself. You have him to read; why should I repeat him? Those who miss Plato's meaning in his own pages would miss it in my commentary."
Julia uttered a taunting laugh, as she glanced at her new husband Tiberius, whom she always treated with scorn.
"You remember, Augustus," Dionysius continued, "that a few minutes ago, Antistius Labio, in answering one of my questions, stated that a force which could move itself was more excellent, as such, than one which required to be set in motion by another, as the mind of the architect, said he, is superior to the stones from which he builds a palace. Labio then very justly added, in reply to another question, that what was moved only by the force of something else possessed no proper force of its own, its force being but a continuation of the first, an effect of the impact. He finally assented, when I showed that it is impossible that every thing without exception which possesses force should have received it, because not having goes before receiving, and because this is only another mode of saying that every thing without exception was once devoid of force. If a particular being has received the force it possesses, that particular being must once have been without it; and if all beings without exception who possess force have received it, they likewise without exception must all, in the same manner, have first been without it, a supposed state during which no force at all existed anywhere. That any being should ever acquire force, when there was nowhere any force for it to acquire, would be an unsatisfactory philosophy."
"There has, perhaps, been," said Tiberius, "an eternal chain of these forces transmitting themselves onward."