A few moments of silence followed, and Paulus Æmilius looked at his friend with an expression of terror which he had not exhibited in his own contest with the Sejan horse.
"When the poet," replied Dionysius, "imagines what might have been, he believes it might have been, and asks you to believe no more; but he would be shocked if you believed less; would be shocked if you told him he was depicting not that which had not been, for this he cheerfully professes, but that which could not ever be supposed. What I say here," added the Athenian, "belongs to a different and somewhat higher plane of thought. The impossibility to suppose non-existent an infinitely perfect being, who, on the other hand, is himself found not impossible to suppose, ought to bring home to the heart the fact that he lives. To be able, in the first place, to conceive him existing, and straightway thereafter to feel an utter inability to form even the conception of his non-existence, because it is only as the necessary being and first force that we can think of him at all, are a handwriting upon the porch of every human soul. He lives, I say it rejoicing, an eternal, necessary, and personal reality; the very conception of him would be an impossibility if his existence were not a fact; yes, and far more than a fact, a primeval truth and a primordial necessity."
As the Athenian thus spoke in a clear and firm voice, which seemed to grow more musical the more it was raised and exerted, Augustus stood up and paced to and fro a few steps on the gravel walk of the impluvium, with his hands behind him and his eyes cast down. All who had been sitting rose at the same time, except Livia, Julia, Antonia, and the two Agrippinas.
"This," whispered Tiberius in Afer's ear, "is not much like failure, or derision, or disgrace for the Greek."
"My predecessor, Julius Cæsar," said Augustus at length, looking round as he stood still, "was the best astronomer and mathematician of his age—we have his calendar now to record it; the best engineer of his age—look at his bridge over the Rhine; the best orator, except one, to whom Rome perhaps ever listened; a most charming talker and companion on any subject; a very great and simple writer; as great a general probably as ever lived; a consummate politician; a keen, wary, swift, yet profound thinker at all times; a man whose intellect was one vast sphere of light; and yet I remember well in what anxiety and curiosity he lived respecting the power which governs the universe, and with what minute and even frivolous precautions he was forever trying to propitiate a good award for his various undertakings; how he muttered charms, whether he was ascending his chariot or descending, or mounting his horse or dismounting—in short, at every turn. Evidently it is not the brightest intellects, or the most perfectly educated, which are the most disposed to scout and scorn such ideas as we have just heard from Dionysius; it is precisely they who are prepared to ponder them the most."
"Julius Cæsar," said Tiberius, "thought, I suspect, pretty much as a great many others do, that this is a very dark, difficult subject; and that we cannot expect to come to any certain conclusions."
"Not to many conclusions," said Dionysius; "that much I fully grant. But two or three broad and general truths are attainable by means of reasonings as close, secure, and irresistible as any in geometry. One such proof—and pray do not forget that I said it was only one out of many—making clear the fact that a single eternal God reigns over all things, I have laid before Augustus and this company already. My last remarks, however, were not disputations, but were only intended to show how those conceptions—to tear which from the mind would be to tear the heat from fire and the rays from light—tend exactly to that conclusion which I had first established by a rigorous demonstration."
"Would not some call your inference from those conceptions themselves a demonstration also?" asked Germanicus.
"I think," replied the Athenian, "that all would so call it if we had but time to examine it thoroughly. There are three other complete lines of argument, however, each of them as interesting as a poem; but so abstruse that I will not travel along them. I will merely show the gates which open into these three ascents of the glorious mountain. It could, then, be demonstrated, first, that all things are objects of mind or of knowledge, somewhere; secondly, that all things undergo some action, or are objects of power, somewhere; thirdly, that all things are loved and cared for somewhere; and this as forming one whole work or production that is, in their relations with each other. Now, the knowledge, the power, and the love (or care) in question can belong only to that first force of whom I speak; and I distinctly affirm, Augustus, that I believe I should be quite able, not to prove by probable reasons merely, but to demonstrate positively and absolutely, the existence of one omnipotent God, by three distinct arguments, starting from the three points I have here mentioned. Yet I pass by those golden gates with a wistful glance at them, and no more."
"It is the horn gates, you know," said Labio, smiling, "which open to the true dreams."