gaze down
the multitudinous vistas of the stars, as we sweep slowly through them
thus--and thus--and thus! Even the spiritual vision, is it not at all
points arrested by the continuous golden walls of the universe?--the
walls of the myriads of the shining bodies that mere number has
appeared to blend into unity?

'Oinos'.

I clearly perceive that the infinity of matter is no dream.

'Agathos'.

There are no dreams in Aidenn--but it is here whispered that, of this
infinity of matter, the _sole_ purpose is to afford infinite springs
at which the soul may allay the thirst _to know_ which is forever
unquenchable within it--since to quench it would be to extinguish the
soul's self. Question me then, my Oinos, freely and without fear.
Come! we will leave to the left the loud harmony of the Pleiades, and
swoop outward from the throne into the starry meadows beyond Orion,
where, for pansies and violets, and heart's-ease, are the beds of the
triplicate and triple-tinted suns.

'Oinos'.

And now, Agathos, as we proceed, instruct me!--speak to me in the
earth's familiar tones! I understand not what you hinted to me just
now of the modes or of the methods of what during mortality, we were
accustomed to call Creation. Do you mean to say that the Creator is
not God?

'Agathos'.

I mean to say that the Deity does not create.

'Oinos'.

Explain!

'Agathos'.

In the beginning only, he created. The seeming creatures which are now
throughout the universe so perpetually springing into being can only
be considered as the mediate or indirect, not as the direct or
immediate results of the Divine creative power.

'Oinos.'

Among men, my Agathos, this idea would be considered heretical in the
extreme.

'Agathos.'

Among the angels, my Oinos, it is seen to be simply true.

'Oinos.'

I can comprehend you thus far--that certain operations of what we term
Nature, or the natural laws, will, under certain conditions, give rise
to that which has all the _appearance_ of creation. Shortly before the
final overthrow of the earth, there were, I well remember, many very
successful experiments in what some philosophers were weak enough to
denominate the creation of animalculae.

'Agathos.'

The cases of which you speak were, in fact, instances of the secondary
creation, and of the _only_ species of creation which has ever been
sinc