"Those stars may well have a higher office," she said. "Look at them, Raoul;--count them we cannot, for they seem to start out of the depths of heaven, one after another, as the eye rests upon the space, until they mock our efforts at calculation. We see they are there in thousands, and may well believe they are in myriads. Now thou hast been taught, else couldst thou never be a navigator, that those stars are worlds like our own, or suns with worlds sailing around them; how is it possible to see and know this without believing in a God and feeling the insignificance of our being?" "I do not deny that there is a power to govern all this, Ghita--but I maintain that it is a principle; not a being, in our shape and form; and that it is the reason of things, rather than a deity." "Who has said that God is a being in our shape and form, Raoul? None know that--- none _can_ know it; none _say_ it who reverence and worship him as they ought!" "Do not your priests say that man has been created in his image? and is not this creating him in his form and likeness?" "Nay, not so, dear Raoul, but in the image of his spirit--that man hath a soul which partakes, though in a small degree, of the imperishable essence of God; and thus far doth he exist in his image. More than this, none have presumed to say. But what a being, to be the master of all those bright worlds!" "Ghita, thou know'st my way of thinking on these matters, and thou also know'st that I would not wound thy gentle spirit by a single word that could grieve thee." "Nay, Raoul, it is _not_ thy way of _thinking_, but thy fashion of _talking_, that makes the difference between us. No one who _thinks_ can ever doubt the existence of a being superior to all of earth and of the universe; and who is Creator and Master of all." "Of a _principle_, if thou wilt, Ghita; but of a _being_, I ask for the proof. That a mighty principle exists, to set all these planets in motion--to create all these stars, and to plant all these suns in space, I never doubted; it would be to question a fact which stands day and night before my eyes; but to suppose a _being_ capable of producing all these things is to believe in beings I never saw." "And why not as well suppose that it is a being that does all this, Raoul, as suppose it what you call a principle?" "Because I see principles beyond my understanding at work all around me: in yonder heavy frigate, groaning under her load of artillery, which floats on this thin water; in the trees of the land that lies so near us; in the animals, which are born and die; the fishes, the birds, and the human beings. But I see no being--know no being, that is able to do all this." "That is because thou know'st not God! He is the creator of the principles of which thou speak'st, and is greater than thy principles themselves."