"Whence the plant?" pursued the Greek.
"From a seed."
"Which was first?" asked Dion.
"The plant."
"Then that plant, at least, never came from a seed," said Dionysius. "Whence came it?"
"The seed was first," said Labio.
"Then that seed," said Dionysius, "never came from a plant. Whence came it?"
There was a laugh, in which not only Labio, but even Tiberius joined.
"No," said Dionysius; "whatever the power which traced out beforehand the limits and proportions which the seed, by growing or feeding, is to fill; whatever the power which surrounds that seed, or other organism, with the manifold conditions for its development, that power must be something more perfect and excellent than the elements which it thus dispenses and controls; and the existence of these less perfect things would have been impossible, had not the other existed first. Thus, ascending the scale of beings, from the less to the more excellent, the simple fact that each exists, proves that a being superior to it must somewhere else be found, and that the superior was in existence first; until we reach that self-existent, all-perfect, eternal being whose life accounts for a universe which his power governs, and which without him would have been an impossibility.
"Without him imperfect things could never have obtained existence, and could not keep it for an instant; and without recognizing him they cannot be explained. This, Augustus, is the second demonstration for which you have asked me. I have just touched, in passing, the porches which led to three others. A sixth could be derived from the nature of free force. No force is real which is not free. The force of a ball flung through the air, is really the force of something else, not of the ball; a hand imparted it; that hand was moved by the mind. In the mind at last, and there alone, the force becomes real, because there alone it is free. All the forces of nature could be shown to be thus communicated, or derivative; and the question, where do they originate? would ultimately bring us to some mind, some intelligence. That intelligence is God."