"If," said the Athenian, "you admit the existence of any one being who possesses a force which he never received from another, that being is evidently eternal. But to say that a being has received its force, is to say that its force has had a beginning; and to say that any thing begins, is to say that once it was not. A chain of forces all received is, therefore, a chain of forces all begun—is it not? Now, if they have all begun, they have all had something prior to them. But nothing can be prior to what is eternal; such a chain or series, therefore, cannot itself be eternal."
"No link is eternal," said Tiberius; "but all the links of the chain together may surely be so."
The Athenian looked round with a smile at Tiberius, and said, "If all the forces which exist now, and all those which ever existed in the universe, without exception, have been received from something else, what is that something else beyond all the forces of the universe? They would all without exception have begun. To say this of them, is merely to say that they were all non-existent once; and this without exception. In other words, the whole chain, even with all its links taken together, is short of eternal. If so, it has been preceded either by blank nothing, or by some being who has a force not thus received, a force which is his own inherently and absolutely, as I maintain. Tell me of a chain, the top of which recedes beyond our ken, that the lowest link depends on the next to it, and this on the third, I understand you; but if I ask what suspends the whole chain, with all its links taken together, it is no answer to say that the links are so numerous and the chain is so long that it requires nothing but itself to keep it in suspension. The longer it is, the greater must be the necessity of the ultimate grasp, and the stronger must that grasp be; and observe, it must be truly ultimate, otherwise you have not solved the difficulty; nay, the suspending force must be distinct from and beyond the chain itself, or you do not account for the suspension. But I will put all this past a cavil. What I said respecting proofs to Domitius Afer, I say respecting causes to Tiberius Cæsar. No one denies that various forces are operating in the universe. Now, of two things, one: Either there is a first force, acting and moving by its own freedom, which; being antecedent to all other forces, not only must be independent of them all, but can alone have produced them all; or else there is in the universe no force which has not some other antecedent to it. This last proposition is easily shown to be an absurdity; for to say that every force has a force antecedent to it, is the same as to say that all forces have another force antecedent to them; in other words, that, over and above all things of a given class, there is another thing of that class. Can there be more than the whole? Can there be another thing of a certain kind, beyond all things of that kind? Besides every force, is there yet another force? If any one is here who would say so, I wait to hear him."
No one said a word.
"Then remark the conclusion," pursued Dionysius. "It is a self-contradiction to contend that there can be one thing more of a class than all things of that class; therefore there is not, and cannot be, a force antecedent to every force in the universe; therefore there is, and must be, in the universe, a force which is the first force, a force which has not and could not have any other antecedent to it. Now this force, being the first, could be controlled by no other; by its action every other must have been produced, and under its control every other must lie."
"Do not you contradict yourself?" inquired Afer; "you show there cannot be a force antecedent to all forces, and still you conclude that there is."
"There cannot," said Dionysius, "be a force antecedent to all forces, because this would be one more of a class beyond all of a class. But there may be the first of the class, before which no other was; and this is what I have demonstrated to exist. That first force is antecedent, not to all, but to all others; there you stop; there is none antecedent to Him. As he is the first force, all things must have come from him. He made and built this universe; it is his imperial palace. You have asked me to prove that one eternal and omnipotent God lives. I have now given you an argument which I am by no means afraid, in this, or any other assembly, to call a demonstration. And it is but one out of a great many."
A low murmur of spontaneous plaudits and frank assent ran round that luxurious, but highly cultivated, appreciative, and brilliant company; and one voice a little too loud was heard exclaiming,
"It is as clear as the light of day, dear Dion!"
All eyes turned in one direction, and Paulus, whose feelings of admiration and sympathy had thus betrayed him, blushed scarlet as he withdrew behind the stately form of Germanicus, who looked round at him smiling, half in amusement, half in kindness.