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.

AGATHOS. The cases of which you speak were, in fact, instances of the
secondary creation--and of the only species of creation which has ever
been, since the first word spoke into existence the first law.

OINOS. Are not the starry worlds that, from the abyss of nonentity,
burst hourly forth into the heavens--are not these stars, Agathos, the
immediate handiwork of the King?

AGATHOS. Let me endeavor, my Oinos, to lead you, step by step, to the
conception I intend. You are well aware that, as no thought can perish,
so no act is without infinite result. We moved our hands, for example,
when we were dwellers on the earth, and, in so doing, gave vibration
to the atmosphere which engirdled it. This vibration was indefinitely
extended, till it gave impulse to every particle of the earth's air,
which thenceforward, and for ever, was actuated by the one movement of
the hand. This fact the mathematicians of our globe well knew. They made
the special effects, indeed, wrought in the fluid by special impulses,
the subject of exact calculation--so that it became easy to determine in
what precise period an impulse of given extent would engirdle the orb,
and impress (for ever) every atom of the atmosphere circumambient.
Retrograding, they found no difficulty, from a given effect, under given
conditions, in determining the value of the original impulse. Now
the mathematicians who saw that the results of any given impulse were
absolutely endless--and who saw that a portion of these results were
accurately traceable through the agency of algebraic analysis--who saw,
too, the facility of the retrogradation--these men saw, at the same
time, that this species of analysis itself, had within itself a capacity
for indefinite progress--that there were no bounds conceivable to its
advancement and applicability, except within the intellect of him who
advanced or applied it. But at this point our mathematicians paused.

OINOS. And why, Agathos, should they have proceeded?

AGATHOS. Because there were some considerations of deep interest beyond.
It was deducible from what they knew, that to a being of infinite
understanding--one to whom the perfection of the algebraic analysis lay
unfolded--there could be no diffic