Unquestionably most on them recognized the existence of _two_ first principles, substances essentially distinct, which had co-existed from eternity--an incorporeal Deity and matter.[395] We grant that the free production of a universe by a creative fiat--the calling of matter into being by a simple act of omnipotence--is not elementary to human reason. The famous physical axiom of antiquity, "_De nihilo nihil, in nihilum posse reverti"_ under one aspect, may be regarded as the expression of the universal consciousness of a mental inability to conceive a creation out of nothing, or an annihilation.[396] "We can not conceive, either, on the one hand, nothing becoming something, or something becoming nothing, on the other hand. When God is said to create the universe out of nothing, we think this by supposing that he evolves the universe out of himself; and in like manner, we conceive annihilation only by conceiving the Creator to withdraw his creation from actuality into power."[397] "It is by _faith_ we understand the worlds were framed by the _word of God_, so that things which are were not made from things which do appear"--that is, from pre-existent matter. [Footnote 394: "Οὐσίαν ἀσώματον."--Plato.] [Footnote 395: Cudworth's "Intellectual System," vol. i. p. 269.] [Footnote 396: Mansell's "Limits of Religious Thought," p. 100.] [Footnote 397: Sir William Hamilton's "Discussions on Philosophy," p. 575.] Those writers[398] are, therefore, clearly in error who assert that the earliest question of Greek philosophy was, What is God? and that various and discordant answers were given, Thales saying, water is God, Anaximenes, air; Heraclitus, fire; Pythagoras, numbers; and so on. The idea of God is a native intuition of the mind. It springs up spontaneously from the depths of the human soul. The human mind naturally recognizes God as an uncreated Mind, and recognizes itself as "the offspring of God." And, therefore, it is simply impossible for it to acknowledge water, or air, or fire, or any material thing to be its God. Now they who reject this fundamental principle evidently misapprehend the real problem of early Grecian philosophic thought. The external world, the material universe, was the first object of their inquiry, and the method of their inquiry was, at the first stage, purely physical. Every object of sense had a beginning and an end; it rose out of something, and it fell back into something. Beneath this ceaseless flow and change there must be some permanent principle. What is that στοιχεῖον--that first element? The changes in the universe seem to obey some principle of law--they have an orderly succession. What is that μορφή--that form, or ideal, or archetype, proper to each thing, and according to which all things are produced? These changes must be produced by some efficient cause, some power or being which is itself immobile, and permanent, and eternal, and adequate to their production.