n, and
one as much as the other leads human reason to Doubt.

"The problem thus established, what signifies Spirit or Matter? Why
trouble about the march of the worlds in one direction or in another,
since the Being who guides them is shown to be an absurdity? Why
continue to ask whether man is approaching heaven or receding from it,
whether creation is rising towards Spirit or descending towards Matter,
if the questioned universe gives no reply? What signifies theogonies and
their armies, theologies and their dogmas, since whichever side of the
problem is man's choice, his God exists not? Let us for a moment take up
the first proposition, and suppose God contemporaneous with Matter.
Is subjection to the action or the co-existence of an alien substance
consistent with being God at all? In such a system, would not God become
a secondary agent compelled to organize Matter? If so, who compelled
Him? Between His material gross companion and Himself, who was the
arbiter? Who paid the wages of the six days' labor imputed to the great
Designer? Has any determining force been found which was neither God nor
Matter? God being regarded as the manufacturer of the machinery of the
worlds, is it not as ridiculous to call Him God as to call the slave who
turns the grindstone a Roman citizen? Besides, another difficulty, as
insoluble to this supreme human reason as it is to God, presents itself.

"If we carry the problem higher, shall we not be like the Hindus, who
put the world upon a tortoise, the tortoise on an elephant, and do not
know on what the feet of their elephant may rest? This supreme will,
issuing from the contest between God and Matter, this God, this more
than God, can He have existed throughout eternity without willing what
He afterwards willed,--admitting that Eternity can be divided into two
eras. No matter where God is, what becomes of His intuitive intelligence
if He did not know His ultimate thought? Which, then, is the true
Eternity,--the created Eternity or the uncreated? But if God throughout
all time did will the world such as it is, this new necessity, which
harmonizes with the idea of sovereign intelligence, implies the
co-eternity of Matter. Whether Matter be co-eternal by a divine will
necessarily accordant with itself from the beginning, or whether
Matter be co-eternal of its own being, the power of God, which must be
absolute, perishes if His will is circumscribed; for in that case God
would find within