The nature of the Universe.

Greetings,

Everyone, who has any degree of right feeling, at the beginning of every enterprise, whether small or great, always call upon God. And we, too, who discourse of the nature of the Universe, how it was created, if we be not our words may be acceptable to them and consistent with themselves.

Let this, then, be our invocation of the Gods. First then, we must make a distinction and ask, What is that, which always is and has no becoming; and what is that, which is always becoming and never is ? That, which is apprehended by intelligence and reason is always in the same state; but that which is conceived by opinion with the help of sensation and without reason, is always in a process of becoming and perishing and never really is.

Now everything that becomes or is created must of necessity be created by some cause, for without a cause nothing can be created. The work of the Creator, whenever He looks to the unchangeable and fashions the form and nature of His work after an unchangeable pattern, must necessarily be made fair and perfect. Was the heaven then or the world, whether called by this or by any other more appropriate name-assuming the name, -was the world, always in existence and without beginning ? or created, and had it a beginning?

And there is still a question to be asked about the Lord of the Universe: Which of the patterns had the Creator in view when he made the world ? If the world be indeed fair, it is manifest that he must have looked to that then to the created pattern, every one will see that He must have looked to the eternal; for the world is the fairest of creations and He is the best of causes. Having been created in this way, the world has been framed in the likeness of that, which is apprehended by reason and mind and is unchangeable, and must therefore of necessity, be a copy of something.

Now it is all-important that the beginning of everything should be according to nature. And in speaking of the copy and the original we may assume that words are akin to the matter which they describe; when they relate to the lasting and permanent and intelligible, they ought to be lasting and unalterable, and, as far as their nature allows, irrefutable and immovable, nothing less.

But when they express only the copy or likeness and not the eternal things themselves, they need only be likely and analogous to the real words. As opinions about the Gods and the generation of the Universe, we are not able to give notions which are altogether and in every respect exact and consistent with one another, we should not be surprised.

remember that we are only mortal striving to become immortal.

Blessings.

I disagree. We are not mortal striving to become immortal. We are immortal. Remember: immortality is that which always is and has no