and cause or causation is define as simply change. When, says Mr. Lewes,
the change is completed, we name the result effect. It is only a matter
of naming.

These definitions conceded accurate, the conclusion that neither cause
nor effect _exist_, seems inevitable, for change of being is not being
itself any more than attraction is the thing attracted. One might as
philosophically erect attraction into reality and fall down and worship
_it_ as change which is in very truth a mere "matter of naming." Not so
the things changing or changed; _they_ are real, the prolific parent of
all appearance we behold, of all sensation we experience, of all ideas
we receive, in short, of all causes and of all effects, which causes and
effects, as shown by Mr. Lewis, are merely notional, for "we call the
antecedent cause, and the sequent effect; but these are merely relative
conceptions; the sequence itself is antecedent to some subsequent
change, and the former antecedent was once only a sequent to its cause,
and so on."

Ancient Simonides, when asked by Dionysius to explain the nature of
Deity, demanded a day to "see about it," then an additional two days,
and then four days more, thus wisely intimating to his silly pupil, that
the more men think about Gods, the less competent they are to give any
rational account of them.

Cicero was sensible and candid enough to acknowledge that he found it
much easier to say what God was not, than what he was. Like Simonides,
he was _mere_ Pagan, and like him, arguing from the known course of
nature, was unable, with all his mastery of talk, to convey positive
ideas of Deity. But how should he convey to others what he did not,
could not, himself possess? To him no revolution had been vouchsafed,