LUCIAN.--Forgetting that their "Great First Cause" stands equally in need of a cause. None of the phænomena of Nature prove, but all disclaim a first cause. Causes and effects have ever moved in an eternal circle; and that which is an effect at one time becomes a cause at another, and vice versa. Theology has taught man to reject that which is easy and rational, and blinded him to the thousand-fold difficulty of supposing a time when neither time* nor matter existed, contrasted with the simple truth that matter is self-existent. This is a proposition too plain and reasonable to answer the deceptive ends of the traders in that pseudo science. MOD.--If, as you say, no power ever did, or can create matter, there are at least an endless series of changes--of new modes or forms of beings which it unceasingly assumes, having the appearance of creation. All this seems to require intelligence and a directing hand. LUCIAN.--Why may not this directing hand be the essential energies of matter alone, of which motion is the chief; for without it no change whatever can take place? The word creation has no proper meaning except when applied to these new combinations, and ever-varying forms. The universe consists of infinitely-derived, and dependent modes of beings; each of which owes its existence to the power and efficacy of the one that immediately preceded it, in an infinite series of successions, without a beginning, or original.** * The theologist makes god say, "before time was, I was." ** According to Hobbes, "God is almighty matter." Existence still maintains existences, And nought begins where no existence is. MOD.--The intercirculation* of the parts of matter, and its unceasing changes into new states of being, in form and substance, seem to reveal the mystery of transubstantiation, which, if I mistake not, was one of the attributes ascribed to deity, long before it was adopted as a dogma of Christianity. LUCIAN.--Like everything else in our Christian fabrication, transubstantiation was taken from the esoteric doctrines of the Gentiles, where it was allegorised in the person of Proteus, who, according to the poets, was Neptune's herdsman; and whose name properly signifies primary, or oldest, meaning that he represented the eternal nature of matter; and his changeableness was expressive of the endless operations, new modes and combinations thereof, wrought chiefly in a fluid state by the perpetual motion** of the sea (Neptune), and the other elements. He was said to take all kinds of shapes and disguises, turning himself into monstrous animals, fire, water, etc., denoting that in him were personified the continually varying forms of matter.*** He was called the servant of Neptune, and said to reside in a cave, meaning the apparent concavity of the heavens. Time, matter and motion form the only eternal Trinity and Unity.