r pretended to
deny there is something. Whatever men could doubt or deny they have
doubted or denied, but in no country of the world, in no age, has the
dogma--there is something, been denied or even treated as doubtful. Here
then Atheists, Theists, and Polytheists agree. They agree of necessity.
There is no escape from the conclusion that something is, except we
adopt the unintelligible dogma there is nothing, which no human being
can, as nothing amounts to nothing and of what amounts to nothing no one
can have an idea. To define the word something by any other word, would
be labour in vain. There is no other word in any language whose meaning
is better understood, and they who do not under stand what it means, if
such persons there be, are not likely to understand the meaning of any
word or words whatever. Ideas of nothing none have. That there is
something, we repeat, must be true; all dogmas or propositions being
necessarily true whose denial involves an impossibility. What the nature
of that something may be is a secondary question, and however determined
cannot affect the primary dogma--things are things whatever may be their
individual or their aggregate nature. Nor is it of the least consequence
what name or names we may see fit to give things, so that each word has
its fixed and true meaning. Whether, for example, we use for the sign of
that something which is, the word Universe, or God, or Substance, or
Spirit, or Matter, or the letter X, is of no importance, if we
understand the word or letter used to be merely the sign of that
something. Words are only useful, when they are the signs of true ideas;
evidently therefore, their legitimate function is to convey such ideas;
and words which convey no ideas at all, or what is worse, only those
which are false, should at once be expunged from the vocabularies of
nations. Something is. The Atheist calls it matter. Other persons may
choose to call it other names; let them. He chooses to call it this one
and no other.

There ever has been something. Here again, is a point of unity. All are
equally assured there ever has been something. Something is, something
must always have been, cry the religions, and the cry is echoed by the
irreligious. This last dogma, like the first, admits not of being
evidenced. As nothing is inconceivable, we cannot even imagine a time
when there was nothing. Atheists say, something ever was, which
something is matter. Theists say, something