Question me then, my Oinos, freely
and without fear. Come! we will leave to the left the loud harmony
of the Pleiades, and swoop outward from the throne into the starry
meadows beyond Orion, where, for pansies and violets, and heart's-
ease, are the beds of the triplicate and triple- tinted suns.
OINOS. And now, Agathos, as we proceed, instruct me!- speak to me in
the earth's familiar tones. I understand not what you hinted to me,
just now, of the modes or of the method of what, during mortality,
we were accustomed to call Creation. Do you mean to say that the
Creator is not God?
AGATHOS. I mean to say that the Deity does not create.
OINOS. Explain.
AGATHOS. In the beginning only, he created. The seeming creatures
which are now, throughout the universe, so perpetually springing
into being, can only be considered as the mediate or indirect, not
as the direct or immediate results of the Divine creative power.
OINOS. Among men, my Agathos, this idea would be considered
heretical in the extreme.
AGATHOS. Among angels, my Oinos, it is seen to be simply true.
OINOS. I can comprehend you thus far- that certain operations of
what we term Nature, or the natural laws, will, under certain
conditions, give rise to that which has all the appearance of
creation. Shortly before the final overthrow of the earth, there were,
I well remember, many very successful experiments in what some
philosophers were weak enough to denominate the creation of
animalculae.
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