to inquire, but at all events
immensely remote--by Him, then again, let us suppose to have been
created----_what_? This is a vitally momentous epoch in our
considerations. _What_ is it that we are justified--that alone we are
justified in supposing to have been, primarily and solely, _created_?

We have attained a point where only _Intuition_ can aid us:--but now let
me recur to the idea which I have already suggested as that alone which
we can properly entertain of intuition. It is but _the conviction
arising from those inductions or deductions of which the processes are
so shadowy as to escape our consciousness, elude our reason, or defy our
capacity of expression_. With this understanding, I now assert--that an
intuition altogether irresistible, although inexpressible, forces me to
the conclusion that what God originally created--that that Matter which,
by dint of his Volition, he first made from his Spirit, or from
Nihility, _could_ have been nothing but Matter in its utmost conceivable
state of----what?--of _Simplicity_?

This will be found the sole absolute _assumption_ of my Discourse. I use
the word "assumption" in its ordinary sense; yet I maintain that even
this my primary proposition, is very, very far indeed, from being really
a mere assumption. Nothing was ever more certainly--no human conclusion
was ever, in fact, more regularly--more rigorously _de_duced:--but, alas!
the processes lie out of the human analysis--at all events are beyond the
utterance of the human tongue.

Let us now endeavor to conceive what Matter must be, when, or if, in its
absolute extreme of _Simplicity_. Here the Reason flies at once to
Imparticularity--to a particle--to _one_ particle--a particle of _one_
kind--of _one_ character--of _one_ nature--of _one size_--of one form--a
particle, therefore, "_without_ form and void"--a particle positively a
particle at all points--a particle absolutely unique, individual,
undivided, and not indivisible only because He who _created_ it, by dint
of his Will, can by an infinitely less energetic exercise of the same
Will, as a matter of course, divide it.

_Oneness_, then, is all that I predicate of the originally created
Matter; but I propose to show that this _Oneness is a principle
abundantly sufficient to account for the constitution, the existing
phaenomena and the plainly inevitable annihilation of at least the
material Universe_.

The willing into being the primordial particle, has c