it, as regards possibilities and impossibilities. The Author confidently
submits that, no man having 'firm faith' in a Deity--without body parts
and passions--can be half so wise as the famous cook of my Lord
Hoppergollop, who said,

What is impossible can't be,
And never never comes to pass.

He, moreover, confidently submits that, granting the existence of so
utterly incomprehensible a Deity, still such Deity could not have caused
nature, or matter, unless we deny the palpably true proposition of
Spinoza, to wit--Of things which have nothing in common, one cannot be
the cause of the other. In harmony with this proposition, Atheists
cannot admit the supernatural caused the natural; for, between the
natural and the supernatural it is impossible to imagine any thing in
common.

The universe is an uncaused existence, or it was caused by something
before it. By universe we mean matter, the sum total of things, whence
all proceeds, and whither all returns. No truth is more obviously true
than the truth that matter, or something not matter, exists of itself,
and consequently is not an effect, but an uncaused cause of all effects.

From such conviction, repugnant though it be to vulgar ideas, there is
no rational way of escape; for however much we may desire, however much
we may struggle to believe there was a time when there was nothing, we
cannot so believe. Human nature is constituted intuitively or
instinctively to feel the eternity of something. To rid oneself of that
feeling is impossible. Nature, or something not nature must ever have
been, is a conclusion to which, what poets call Fate--